Identity cloud service authorization model with dynamic roles and scopes

ABSTRACT

A system for authorizing access to a resource associated with a tenancy in an identity management system that includes a plurality of tenancies receives an access token request for an access token that corresponds to the resource, the request including user information and application information, the user information including roles of a user and the application information including roles of the application. The system evaluates the access token request by computing dynamic roles and corresponding dynamic scopes for the access token including a second intersection between the dynamic roles of the user and the dynamic roles of the application. The system then provides the access token that includes the computed static scopes, where the scopes are based at least on the roles of the user and the roles of the application, and further including the computed dynamic roles and corresponding dynamic scopes.

CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application claims priority of U.S. Provisional Patent ApplicationSer. No. 62/334,645, filed on May 11, 2016, U.S. Provisional PatentApplication Ser. No. 62/371,336, filed on Aug. 5, 2016 and U.S.Provisional Patent Application Ser. No. 62/376,069, filed on Aug. 17,2016. The disclosures of each of the foregoing applications are herebyincorporated by reference.

FIELD

One embodiment is directed generally to identity management, and inparticular, to identity management in a cloud system.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Generally, the use of cloud-based applications (e.g., enterprise publiccloud applications, third-party cloud applications, etc.) is soaring,with access coming from a variety of devices (e.g., desktop and mobiledevices) and a variety of users (e.g., employees, partners, customers,etc.). The abundant diversity and accessibility of cloud-basedapplications has led identity management and access security to become acentral concern. Typical security concerns in a cloud environment areunauthorized access, account hijacking, malicious insiders, etc.Accordingly, there is a need for secure access to cloud-basedapplications, or applications located anywhere, regardless of from whatdevice type or by what user type the applications are accessed.

SUMMARY

One embodiment is a system for authorizing access to a resourceassociated with a tenancy in an identity management system that includesa plurality of tenancies. The system receives an access token requestfor an access token that corresponds to the resource, the requestincluding user information and application information, the userinformation including roles of a user and the application informationincluding dynamic roles of the application and dynamic roles for theapplication. The system determines dynamic roles for the user andevaluates the access token request by computing static scopes for theaccess token including determining a first intersection between the userinformation and the application information. The system evaluates theaccess token request by computing dynamic roles and correspondingdynamic scopes for the access token including a second intersectionbetween the dynamic roles of the user and the dynamic roles of theapplication. The system then provides the access token that includes thecomputed static scopes, where the scopes are based at least on the rolesof the user and the roles of the application, and further including thecomputed dynamic roles and corresponding dynamic scopes.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIGS. 1-5 are block diagrams of example embodiments that providecloud-based identity management.

FIG. 6 is a block diagram providing a system view of an embodiment.

FIG. 6A is a block diagram providing a functional view of an embodiment.

FIG. 7 is a block diagram of an embodiment that implements Cloud Gate.

FIG. 8 illustrates an example system that implements multiple tenanciesin one embodiment.

FIG. 9 is a block diagram of a network view of an embodiment.

FIG. 10 is a block diagram of a system architecture view of single signon (“SSO”) functionality in one embodiment.

FIG. 11 is a message sequence flow of SSO functionality in oneembodiment.

FIG. 12 illustrates an example of a distributed data grid in oneembodiment.

FIG. 13 illustrates a call flow of OAuth token issuance flow inaccordance with one embodiment.

FIG. 14 illustrates a call flow of a REST function securityauthorization sequence in accordance with one embodiment which occursafter the functionality of FIG. 13.

FIG. 15 is a block diagram of the authorization model architecture inaccordance with one embodiment.

FIG. 16 illustrates functionality for computing applicable scopes fromuser and client/application roles in accordance with one embodiment.

FIG. 16A illustrates functionality for computing a dynamic role-scopeclaim in accordance with one embodiment.

FIG. 16B illustrates functionality for computing a client or userapplicable scope in accordance to an embodiment.

FIG. 16C illustrates functionality for determining inherited applicationroles in accordance with one embodiment.

FIG. 16D illustrates functionality for computing a dynamic role-scopetoken claim in accordance with another embodiment.

FIG. 17 illustrates functionality for policy evaluation in accordancewith one embodiment.

FIG. 17A illustrates functionality for computing alsoTenants claim inaccordance with one embodiment.

FIGS. 18 and 18A-C illustrate functionality for REST functionauthorization/decide( ) API flow in accordance with one embodiment.

FIG. 19 illustrates functionality for finding all applicable policies inaccordance with one embodiment.

FIG. 20 illustrates functionality for evaluating each applicable policyin accordance with one embodiment.

FIG. 21 illustrates a policy definition map cache in accordance to anembodiment.

FIG. 22 illustrates a role policy definition map cache in accordance toan embodiment.

FIG. 23 illustrates a principal to role policy names map cache inaccordance to an embodiment.

FIG. 24 illustrates an inherited application role map cache inaccordance to an embodiment.

FIG. 25 illustrates a permissionset definition map cache in accordanceto an embodiment.

FIG. 26 illustrates a principal to policy map cache in accordance to anembodiment.

FIG. 27 illustrates a resourcetype to policy name map cache inaccordance to an embodiment.

FIG. 28 illustrates a granted role to role policy name cache inaccordance to an embodiment.

FIG. 29 illustrates a permissionset to policy map cache in accordance toan embodiment.

FIG. 30 is a flow diagram of authorization functionality in accordancewith an embodiment.

FIG. 31 provides an example of a portion of a JWT token that includesthe dynamic roles and scopes, as well as the static scopes, inaccordance to one embodiment.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

Embodiments provide an identity cloud service that implements amicroservices based architecture and provides multi-tenant identity anddata security management and secure access to cloud-based applications.Embodiments support secure access for hybrid cloud deployments (i.e.,cloud deployments which include a combination of a public cloud and aprivate cloud). Embodiments protect applications and data both in thecloud and on-premise. Embodiments support multi-channel access via web,mobile, and application programming interfaces (“APIs”). Embodimentsmanage access for different users, such as customers, partners, andemployees. Embodiments manage, control, and audit access across thecloud as well as on-premise. Embodiments integrate with new and existingapplications and identities. Embodiments are horizontally scalable.

One embodiment is a system that implements a number of microservices ina stateless middle tier environment to provide cloud-based multi-tenantidentity and access management services. In one embodiment, eachrequested identity management service is broken into real-time andnear-real-time tasks. The real-time tasks are handled by a microservicein the middle tier, while the near-real-time tasks are offloaded to amessage queue. Embodiments implement access tokens that are consumed bya routing tier and a middle tier to enforce a security model foraccessing the microservices. Accordingly, embodiments provide acloud-scale Identity and Access Management (“IAM”) platform based on amulti-tenant, microservices architecture.

One embodiment provides an identity cloud service that enablesorganizations to rapidly develop fast, reliable, and secure services fortheir new business initiatives. In one embodiment, the identity cloudservice provides a number of core services, each of which solving aunique challenge faced by many enterprises. In one embodiment, theidentity cloud service supports administrators in, for example, initialon-boarding/importing of users, importing groups with user members,creating/updating/disabling/enabling/deleting users,assigning/un-assigning users into/from groups,creating/updating/deleting groups, resetting passwords, managingpolicies, sending activation, etc. The identity cloud service alsosupports end users in, for example, modifying profiles, settingprimary/recovery emails, verifying emails, unlocking their accounts,changing passwords, recovering passwords in case of forgotten password,etc.

Unified Security of Access

One embodiment protects applications and data in a cloud environment aswell as in an on-premise environment. The embodiment secures access toany application from any device by anyone. The embodiment providesprotection across both environments since inconsistencies in securitybetween the two environments may result in higher risks. For example,such inconsistencies may cause a sales person to continue having accessto their Customer Relationship Management (“CRM”) account even afterthey have defected to the competition. Accordingly, embodiments extendthe security controls provisioned in the on-premise environment into thecloud environment. For example, if a person leaves a company,embodiments ensure that their accounts are disabled both on-premise andin the cloud.

Generally, users may access applications and/or data through manydifferent channels such as web browsers, desktops, mobile phones,tablets, smart watches, other wearables, etc. Accordingly, oneembodiment provides secured access across all these channels. Forexample, a user may use their mobile phone to complete a transactionthey started on their desktop.

One embodiment further manages access for various users such ascustomers, partners, employees, etc. Generally, applications and/or datamay be accessed not just by employees but by customers or third parties.Although many known systems take security measures when onboardingemployees, they generally do not take the same level of securitymeasures when giving access to customers, third parties, partners, etc.,resulting in the possibility of security breaches by parties that arenot properly managed. However, embodiments ensure that sufficientsecurity measures are provided for access of each type of user and notjust employees.

Identity Cloud Service

Embodiments provide an Identity Cloud Service (“IDCS”) that is amulti-tenant, cloud-scale, IAM platform. IDCS provides authentication,authorization, auditing, and federation. IDCS manages access to customapplications and services running on the public cloud, and on-premisesystems. In an alternative or additional embodiment, IDCS may alsomanage access to public cloud services. For example, IDCS can be used toprovide Single Sign On (“SSO”) functionality across such variety ofservices/applications/systems.

Embodiments are based on a multi-tenant, microservices architecture fordesigning, building, and delivering cloud-scale software services.Multi-tenancy refers to having one physical implementation of a servicesecurely supporting multiple customers buying that service. A service isa software functionality or a set of software functionalities (such asthe retrieval of specified information or the execution of a set ofoperations) that can be reused by different clients for differentpurposes, together with the policies that control its usage (e.g., basedon the identity of the client requesting the service). In oneembodiment, a service is a mechanism to enable access to one or morecapabilities, where the access is provided using a prescribed interfaceand is exercised consistent with constraints and policies as specifiedby the service description.

In one embodiment, a microservice is an independently deployableservice. In one embodiment, the term microservice contemplates asoftware architecture design pattern in which complex applications arecomposed of small, independent processes communicating with each otherusing language-agnostic APIs. In one embodiment, microservices aresmall, highly decoupled services and each may focus on doing a smalltask. In one embodiment, the microservice architectural style is anapproach to developing a single application as a suite of smallservices, each running in its own process and communicating withlightweight mechanisms (e.g., an HTTP resource API). In one embodiment,microservices are easier to replace relative to a monolithic servicethat performs all or many of the same functions. Moreover, each of themicroservices may be updated without adversely affecting the othermicroservices. In contrast, updates to one portion of a monolithicservice may undesirably or unintentionally negatively affect the otherportions of the monolithic service. In one embodiment, microservices maybe beneficially organized around their capabilities. In one embodiment,the startup time for each of a collection of microservices is much lessthan the startup time for a single application that collectivelyperforms all the services of those microservices. In some embodiments,the startup time for each of such microservices is about one second orless, while the startup time of such single application may be about aminute, several minutes, or longer.

In one embodiment, microservices architecture refers to a specialization(i.e., separation of tasks within a system) and implementation approachfor service oriented architectures (“SOAs”) to build flexible,independently deployable software systems. Services in a microservicesarchitecture are processes that communicate with each other over anetwork in order to fulfill a goal. In one embodiment, these servicesuse technology-agnostic protocols. In one embodiment, the services havea small granularity and use lightweight protocols. In one embodiment,the services are independently deployable. By distributingfunctionalities of a system into different small services, the cohesionof the system is enhanced and the coupling of the system is decreased.This makes it easier to change the system and add functions andqualities to the system at any time. It also allows the architecture ofan individual service to emerge through continuous refactoring, andhence reduces the need for a big up-front design and allows forreleasing software early and continuously.

In one embodiment, in the microservices architecture, an application isdeveloped as a collection of services, and each service runs arespective process and uses a lightweight protocol to communicate (e.g.,a unique API for each microservice). In the microservices architecture,decomposition of a software into individual services/capabilities can beperformed at different levels of granularity depending on the service tobe provided. A service is a runtime component/process. Each microserviceis a self-contained module that can talk to other modules/microservices.Each microservice has an unnamed universal port that can be contacted byothers. In one embodiment, the unnamed universal port of a microserviceis a standard communication channel that the microservice exposes byconvention (e.g., as a conventional Hypertext Transfer Protocol (“HTTP”)port) and that allows any other module/microservice within the sameservice to talk to it. A microservice or any other self-containedfunctional module can be generically referred to as a “service”.

Embodiments provide multi-tenant identity management services.Embodiments are based on open standards to ensure ease of integrationwith various applications, delivering IAM capabilities throughstandards-based services.

Embodiments manage the lifecycle of user identities which entails thedetermination and enforcement of what an identity can access, who can begiven such access, who can manage such access, etc. Embodiments run theidentity management workload in the cloud and support securityfunctionality for applications that are not necessarily in the cloud.The identity management services provided by the embodiments may bepurchased from the cloud. For example, an enterprise may purchase suchservices from the cloud to manage their employees' access to theirapplications.

Embodiments provide system security, massive scalability, end userusability, and application interoperability. Embodiments address thegrowth of the cloud and the use of identity services by customers. Themicroservices based foundation addresses horizontal scalabilityrequirements, while careful orchestration of the services addresses thefunctional requirements. Achieving both goals requires decomposition(wherever possible) of the business logic to achieve statelessness witheventual consistency, while much of the operational logic not subject toreal-time processing is shifted to near-real-time by offloading to ahighly scalable asynchronous event management system with guaranteeddelivery and processing. Embodiments are fully multi-tenant from the webtier to the data tier in order to realize cost efficiencies and ease ofsystem administration.

Embodiments are based on industry standards (e.g., OpenID Connect,OAuth2, Security Assertion Markup Language 2 (“SAML2”), System forCross-domain Identity Management (“SCIM”), Representational StateTransfer (“REST”), etc.) for ease of integration with variousapplications. One embodiment provides a cloud-scale API platform andimplements horizontally scalable microservices for elastic scalability.The embodiment leverages cloud principles and provides a multi-tenantarchitecture with per-tenant data separation. The embodiment furtherprovides per-tenant customization via tenant self-service. Theembodiment is available via APIs for on-demand integration with otheridentity services, and provides continuous feature release.

One embodiment provides interoperability and leverages investments inidentity management (“IDM”) functionality in the cloud and on-premise.The embodiment provides automated identity synchronization fromon-premise Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (“LDAP”) data to clouddata and vice versa. The embodiment provides a SCIM identity bus betweenthe cloud and the enterprise, and allows for different options forhybrid cloud deployments (e.g., identity federation and/orsynchronization, SSO agents, user provisioning connectors, etc.).

Accordingly, one embodiment is a system that implements a number ofmicroservices in a stateless middle tier to provide cloud-basedmulti-tenant identity and access management services. In one embodiment,each requested identity management service is broken into real-time andnear-real-time tasks. The real-time tasks are handled by a microservicein the middle tier, while the near-real-time tasks are offloaded to amessage queue. Embodiments implement tokens that are consumed by arouting tier to enforce a security model for accessing themicroservices. Accordingly, embodiments provide a cloud-scale IAMplatform based on a multi-tenant, microservices architecture.

Generally, known systems provide siloed access to applications providedby different environments, e.g., enterprise cloud applications, partnercloud applications, third-party cloud applications, and customerapplications. Such siloed access may require multiple passwords,different password policies, different account provisioning andde-provisioning schemes, disparate audit, etc. However, one embodimentimplements IDCS to provide unified IAM functionality over suchapplications. FIG. 1 is a block diagram 100 of an example embodimentwith IDCS 118, providing a unified identity platform 126 for onboardingusers and applications. The embodiment provides seamless user experienceacross various applications such as enterprise cloud applications 102,partner cloud applications 104, third-party cloud applications 110, andcustomer applications 112. Applications 102, 104, 110, 112 may beaccessed through different channels, for example, by a mobile phone user108 via a mobile phone 106, by a desktop computer user 116 via a browser114, etc. A web browser (commonly referred to as a browser) is asoftware application for retrieving, presenting, and traversinginformation resources on the World Wide Web. Examples of web browsersare Mozilla Firefox®, Google Chrome®, Microsoft Internet Explorer®, andApple Safari®.

IDCS 118 provides a unified view 124 of a user's applications, a unifiedsecure credential across devices and applications (via identity platform126), and a unified way of administration (via an admin console 122).IDCS services may be obtained by calling IDCS APIs 142. Such servicesmay include, for example, login/SSO services 128 (e.g., OpenID Connect),federation services 130 (e.g., SAML), token services 132 (e.g., OAuth),directory services 134 (e.g., SCIM), provisioning services 136 (e.g.,SCIM or Any Transport over Multiprotocol (“AToM”)), event services 138(e.g., REST), and authorization services 140 (e.g., SCIM). IDCS 118 mayfurther provide reports and dashboards 120 related to the offeredservices.

Integration Tools

Generally, it is common for large corporations to have an IAM system inplace to secure access to their on-premise applications. Businesspractices are usually matured and standardized around an in-house IAMsystem such as “Oracle IAM Suite” from Oracle Corp. Even small to mediumorganizations usually have their business processes designed aroundmanaging user access through a simple directory solution such asMicrosoft Active Directory (“AD”). To enable on-premise integration,embodiments provide tools that allow customers to integrate theirapplications with IDCS.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram 200 of an example embodiment with IDCS 202 ina cloud environment 208, providing integration with an AD 204 that ison-premise 206. The embodiment provides seamless user experience acrossall applications including on-premise and third-party applications, forexample, on-premise applications 218 and various applications/servicesin cloud 208 such as cloud services 210, cloud applications 212, partnerapplications 214, and customer applications 216. Cloud applications 212may include, for example, Human Capital Management (“HCM”), CRM, talentacquisition (e.g., Oracle Taleo cloud service from Oracle Corp.),Configure Price and Quote (“CPQ”), etc. Cloud services 210 may include,for example, Platform as a Service (“PaaS”), Java, database, businessintelligence (“BI”), documents, etc.

Applications 210, 212, 214, 216, 218, may be accessed through differentchannels, for example, by a mobile phone user 220 via a mobile phone222, by a desktop computer user 224 via a browser 226, etc. Theembodiment provides automated identity synchronization from on-premiseAD data to cloud data via a SCIM identity bus 234 between cloud 208 andthe enterprise 206. The embodiment further provides a SAML bus 228 forfederating authentication from cloud 208 to on-premise AD 204 (e.g.,using passwords 232).

Generally, an identity bus is a service bus for identity relatedservices. A service bus provides a platform for communicating messagesfrom one system to another system. It is a controlled mechanism forexchanging information between trusted systems, for example, in aservice oriented architecture (“SOA”). An identity bus is a logical busbuilt according to standard HTTP based mechanisms such as web service,web server proxies, etc. The communication in an identity bus may beperformed according to a respective protocol (e.g., SCIM, SAML, OpenIDConnect, etc.). For example, a SAML bus is an HTTP based connectionbetween two systems for communicating messages for SAML services.Similarly, a SCIM bus is used to communicate SCIM messages according tothe SCIM protocol.

The embodiment of FIG. 2 implements an identity (“ID”) bridge 230 thatis a small binary (e.g., 1 MB in size) that can be downloaded andinstalled on-premise 206 alongside a customer's AD 204. ID Bridge 230listens to users and groups (e.g., groups of users) from theorganizational units (“OUs”) chosen by the customer and synchronizesthose users to cloud 208. In one embodiment, users' passwords 232 arenot synchronized to cloud 208. Customers can manage application accessfor users by mapping IDCS users' groups to cloud applications managed inIDCS 208. Whenever the users' group membership is changed on-premise206, their corresponding cloud application access changes automatically.

For example, an employee moving from engineering to sales can get nearinstantaneous access to the sales cloud and lose access to the developercloud. When this change is reflected in on-premise AD 204, cloudapplication access change is accomplished in near-real-time. Similarly,access to cloud applications managed in IDCS 208 is revoked for usersleaving the company. For full automation, customers may set up SSObetween on-premise AD 204 and IDCS 208 through, e.g., AD federationservice (“AD/FS”, or some other mechanism that implements SAMLfederation) so that end users can get access to cloud applications 210,212, 214, 216, and on-premise applications 218 with a single corporatepassword 332.

FIG. 3 is a block diagram 300 of an example embodiment that includes thesame components 202, 206, 208, 210, 212, 214, 216, 218, 220, 222, 224,226, 228, 234 as in FIG. 2. However, in the embodiment of FIG. 3, IDCS202 provides integration with an on-premise IDM 304 such as Oracle IDM.Oracle IDM 304 is a software suite from Oracle Corp. for providing IAMfunctionality. The embodiment provides seamless user experience acrossall applications including on-premise and third-party applications. Theembodiment provisions user identities from on-premise IDM 304 to IDCS208 via SCIM identity bus 234 between cloud 202 and enterprise 206. Theembodiment further provides SAML bus 228 (or an OpenID Connect bus) forfederating authentication from cloud 208 to on-premise 206.

In the embodiment of FIG. 3, an Oracle Identity Manager (“OIM”)Connector 302 from Oracle Corp., and an Oracle Access Manager (“OAM”)federation module 306 from Oracle Corp., are implemented as extensionmodules of Oracle IDM 304. A connector is a module that has physicalawareness about how to talk to a system. OIM is an applicationconfigured to manage user identities (e.g., manage user accounts indifferent systems based on what a user should and should not have accessto). OAM is a security application that provides access managementfunctionality such as web SSO; identity context, authentication andauthorization; policy administration; testing; logging; auditing; etc.OAM has built-in support for SAML. If a user has an account in IDCS 202,OIM connector 302 and OAM federation 306 can be used with Oracle IDM 304to create/delete that account and manage access from that account.

FIG. 4 is a block diagram 400 of an example embodiment that includes thesame components 202, 206, 208, 210, 212, 214, 216, 218, 220, 222, 224,226, 234 as in FIGS. 2 and 3. However, in the embodiment of FIG. 3, IDCS202 provides functionality to extend cloud identities to on-premiseapplications 218. The embodiment provides seamless view of the identityacross all applications including on-premise and third-partyapplications. In the embodiment of FIG. 4, SCIM identity bus 234 is usedto synchronize data in IDCS 202 with on-premise LDAP data called “CloudCache” 402. Cloud Cache 402 is disclosed in more detail below.

Generally, an application that is configured to communicate based onLDAP needs an LDAP connection. An LDAP connection may not be establishedby such application through a URL (unlike, e.g., “www.google.com” thatmakes a connection to Google) since the LDAP needs to be on a localnetwork. In the embodiment of FIG. 4, an LDAP-based application 218makes a connection to Cloud Cache 402, and Cloud Cache 402 establishes aconnection to IDCS 202 and then pulls data from IDCS 202 as it is beingrequested. The communication between IDCS 202 and Cloud Cache 402 may beimplemented according to the SCIM protocol. For example, Cloud Cache 402may use SCIM bus 234 to send a SCIM request to IDCS 202 and receivecorresponding data in return.

Generally, fully implementing an application includes building aconsumer portal, running marketing campaigns on the external userpopulation, supporting web and mobile channels, and dealing with userauthentication, sessions, user profiles, user groups, application roles,password policies, self-service/registration, social integration,identity federation, etc. Generally, application developers are notidentity/security experts. Therefore, on-demand identity managementservices are desired.

FIG. 5 is a block diagram 500 of an example embodiment that includes thesame components 202, 220, 222, 224, 226, 234, 402, as in FIGS. 2-4.However, in the embodiment of FIG. 5, IDCS 202 provides secure identitymanagement on demand. The embodiment provides on demand integration withidentity services of IDCS 202 (e.g., based on standards such as OpenIDConnect, OAuth2, SAML2, or SCIM). Applications 505 (which may beon-premise, in a public cloud, or in a private cloud) may call identityservice APIs 504 in IDCS 202. The services provided by IDCS 202 mayinclude, for example, self-service registration 506, password management508, user profile management 510, user authentication 512, tokenmanagement 514, social integration 516, etc.

In this embodiment, SCIM identity bus 234 is used to synchronize data inIDCS 202 with data in on-premise LDAP Cloud Cache 402. Further, a “CloudGate” 502 running on a web server/proxy (e.g., NGINX, Apache, etc.) maybe used by applications 505 to obtain user web SSO and REST API securityfrom IDCS 202. Cloud Gate 502 is a component that secures access tomulti-tenant IDCS microservices by ensuring that client applicationsprovide valid access tokens, and/or users successfully authenticate inorder to establish SSO sessions. Cloud Gate 502 is further disclosedbelow. Cloud Gate 502 (enforcement point similar to webgate/webagent)enables applications running behind supported web servers to participatein SSO.

One embodiment provides SSO and cloud SSO functionality. A general pointof entry for both on-premise IAM and IDCS in many organizations is SSO.Cloud SSO enables users to access multiple cloud resources with a singleuser sign-in. Often, organizations will want to federate theiron-premise identities. Accordingly, embodiments utilize open standardsto allow for integration with existing SSO to preserve and extendinvestment (e.g., until a complete, eventual transition to an identitycloud service approach is made).

One embodiment may provide the following functionalities:

maintain an identity store to track user accounts, ownership, access,and permissions that have been authorized,

integrate with workflow to facilitate various approvals (e.g.,management, IT, human resources, legal, and compliance) needed forapplications access,

provision SaaS user accounts for selective devices (e.g., mobile andpersonal computer (“PC”)) with access to user portal containing manyprivate and public cloud resources, and

facilitate periodic management attestation review for compliance withregulations and current job responsibilities.

In addition to these functions, embodiments may further provide:

cloud account provisioning to manage account life cycle in cloudapplications,

more robust multifactor authentication (“MFA”) integration,

extensive mobile security capabilities, and

dynamic authentication options.

One embodiment provides adaptive authentication and MFA. Generally,passwords and challenge questions have been seen as inadequate andsusceptible to common attacks such as phishing. Most business entitiestoday are looking at some form of MFA to reduce risk. To be successfullydeployed, however, solutions need to be easily provisioned, maintained,and understood by the end user, as end users usually resist anythingthat interferes with their digital experience. Companies are looking forways to securely incorporate bring your own device (“BYOD”), socialidentities, remote users, customers, and contractors, while making MFAan almost transparent component of a seamless user access experience.Within an MFA deployment, industry standards such as OAuth and OpenIDConnect are essential to ensure integration of existing multifactorsolutions and the incorporation of newer, adaptive authenticationtechnology. Accordingly, embodiments define dynamic (or adaptive)authentication as the evaluation of available information (i.e., IPaddress, location, time of day, and biometrics) to prove an identityafter a user session has been initiated. With the appropriate standards(e.g., open authentication (“OATH”) and fast identity online (“FIDO”))integration and extensible identity management framework, embodimentsprovide MFA solutions that can be adopted, upgraded, and integratedeasily within an IT organization as part of an end-to-end secure IAMdeployment. When considering MFA and adaptive policies, organizationsmust implement consistent policies across on-premise and cloudresources, which in a hybrid IDCS and on-premise IAM environmentrequires integration between systems.

One embodiment provides user provisioning and certification. Generally,the fundamental function of an IAM solution is to enable and support theentire user provisioning life cycle. This includes providing users withthe application access appropriate for their identity and role withinthe organization, certifying that they have the correct ongoing accesspermissions (e.g., as their role or the tasks or applications usedwithin their role change over time), and promptly de-provisioning themas their departure from the organization may require. This is importantnot only for meeting various compliance requirements but also becauseinappropriate insider access is a major source of security breaches andattacks. An automated user provisioning capability within an identitycloud solution can be important not only in its own right but also aspart of a hybrid IAM solution whereby IDCS provisioning may providegreater flexibility than an on-premise solution for transitions as acompany downsizes, upsizes, merges, or looks to integrate existingsystems with IaaS/PaaS/SaaS environments. An IDCS approach can save timeand effort in one-off upgrades and ensure appropriate integration amongnecessary departments, divisions, and systems. The need to scale thistechnology often sneaks up on corporations, and the ability to deliver ascalable IDCS capability immediately across the enterprise can providebenefits in flexibility, cost, and control.

Generally, an employee is granted additional privileges (i.e.,“privilege creep”) over the years as her/his job changes. Companies thatare lightly regulated generally lack an “attestation” process thatrequires managers to regularly audit their employees' privileges (e.g.,access to networks, servers, applications, and data) to halt or slow theprivilege creep that results in over-privileged accounts. Accordingly,one embodiment may provide a regularly conducted (at least once a year)attestation process. Further, with mergers and acquisitions, the needfor these tools and services increases exponentially as users are onSaaS systems, on-premise, span different departments, and/or are beingde-provisioned or re-allocated. The move to cloud can further complicatethis situation, and the process can quickly escalate beyond existing,often manually managed, certification methods. Accordingly, oneembodiment automates these functions and applies sophisticated analyticsto user profiles, access history, provisioning/de-provisioning, andfine-grained entitlements.

One embodiment provides identity analytics. Generally, the ability tointegrate identity analytics with the IAM engine for comprehensivecertification and attestation can be critical to securing anorganization's risk profile. Properly deployed identity analytics candemand total internal policy enforcement. Identity analytics thatprovide a unified single management view across cloud and on-premise aremuch needed in a proactive governance, risk, and compliance (“GRC”)enterprise environment, and can aid in providing a closed-loop processfor reducing risk and meeting compliance regulations. Accordingly, oneembodiment provides identity analytics that are easily customizable bythe client to accommodate specific industry demands and governmentregulations for reports and analysis required by managers, executives,and auditors.

One embodiment provides self-service and access request functionality toimprove the experience and efficiency of the end user and to reducecosts from help desk calls. Generally, while a number of companiesdeploy on-premise self-service access request for their employees, manyhave not extended these systems adequately outside the formal corporatewalls. Beyond employee use, a positive digital customer experienceincreases business credibility and ultimately contributes to revenueincrease, and companies not only save on customer help desk calls andcosts but also improve customer satisfaction. Accordingly, oneembodiment provides an identity cloud service environment that is basedon open standards and seamlessly integrates with existing access controlsoftware and MFA mechanisms when necessary. The SaaS delivery modelsaves time and effort formerly devoted to systems upgrades andmaintenance, freeing professional IT staff to focus on more corebusiness applications.

One embodiment provides privileged account management (“PAM”).Generally, every organization, whether using SaaS, PaaS, IaaS, oron-premise applications, is vulnerable to unauthorized privilegedaccount abuse by insiders with super-user access credentials such assystem administrators, executives, HR officers, contractors, systemsintegrators, etc. Moreover, outside threats typically first breach alow-level user account to eventually reach and exploit privileged useraccess controls within the enterprise system. Accordingly, oneembodiment provides PAM to prevent such unauthorized insider accountuse. The main component of a PAM solution is a password vault which maybe delivered in various ways, e.g., as software to be installed on anenterprise server, as a virtual appliance also on an enterprise server,as a packaged hardware/software appliance, or as part of a cloudservice. PAM functionality is similar to a physical safe used to storepasswords kept in an envelope and changed periodically, with a manifestfor signing them in and out. One embodiment allows for a passwordcheckout as well as setting time limits, forcing periodic changes,automatically tracking checkout, and reporting on all activities. Oneembodiment provides a way to connect directly through to a requestedresource without the user ever knowing the password. This capabilityalso paves the way for session management and additional functionality.

Generally, most cloud services utilize APIs and administrativeinterfaces, which provide opportunities for infiltrators to circumventsecurity. Accordingly, one embodiment accounts for these holes in PAMpractices as the move to the cloud presents new challenges for PAM. Manysmall to medium sized businesses now administer their own SaaS systems(e.g., Office 365), while larger companies increasingly have individualbusiness units spinning up their own SaaS and IaaS services. Thesecustomers find themselves with PAM capabilities within the identitycloud service solutions or from their IaaS/PaaS provider but with littleexperience in handling this responsibility. Moreover, in some cases,many different geographically dispersed business units are trying tosegregate administrative responsibilities for the same SaaSapplications. Accordingly, one embodiment allows customers in thesesituations to link existing PAM into the overall identity framework ofthe identity cloud service and move toward greater security andcompliance with the assurance of scaling to cloud load requirements asbusiness needs dictate.

API Platform

Embodiments provide an API platform that exposes a collection ofcapabilities as services. The APIs are aggregated into microservices andeach microservice exposes one or more of the APIs. That is, eachmicroservice may expose different types of APIs. In one embodiment, eachmicroservice communicates only through its APIs. In one embodiment, eachAPI may be a microservice. In one embodiment, multiple APIs areaggregated into a service based on a target capability to be provided bythat service (e.g., OAuth, SAML, Admin, etc.). As a result, similar APIsare not exposed as separate runtime processes. The APIs are what is madeavailable to a service consumer to use the services provided by IDCS.

Generally, in the web environment of IDCS, a URL includes three parts: ahost, a microservice, and a resource (e.g., host/microservice/resource).In one embodiment, the microservice is characterized by having aspecific URL prefix, e.g., “host/oauth/v1” where the actual microserviceis “oauth/v1”, and under “oauth/v1” there are multiple APIs, e.g., anAPI to request tokens: “host/oauth/v1/token”, an API to authenticate auser: “host/oauth/v1/authorize”, etc. That is, the URL implements amicroservice, and the resource portion of the URL implements an API.Accordingly, multiple APIs are aggregated under the same microservice.In one embodiment, the host portion of the URL identifies a tenant(e.g., https://tenant3.identity.oraclecloud.com:/oauth/v1/token”).

Configuring applications that integrate with external services with thenecessary endpoints and keeping that configuration up to date istypically a challenge. To meet this challenge, embodiments expose apublic discovery API at a well-known location from where applicationscan discover the information about IDCS they need in order to consumeIDCS APIs. In one embodiment, two discovery documents are supported:IDCS Configuration (which includes IDCS, SAML, SCIM, OAuth, and OpenIDConnect configuration, at e.g.,<IDCS-URL>/.well-known/idcs-configuration), and Industry-standard OpenIDConnect Configuration (at, e.g.,<IDCS-URL>/.well-known/openid-configuration). Applications can retrievediscovery documents by being configured with a single IDCS URL.

FIG. 6 is a block diagram providing a system view 600 of IDCS in oneembodiment. In FIG. 6, any one of a variety of applications/services 602may make HTTP calls to IDCS APIs to use IDCS services. Examples of suchapplications/services 602 are web applications, native applications(e.g., applications that are built to run on a specific operatingsystem, such as Windows applications, iOS applications, Androidapplications, etc.), web services, customer applications, partnerapplications, or any services provided by a public cloud, such asSoftware as a Service (“SaaS”), PaaS, and Infrastructure as a Service(“IaaS”).

In one embodiment, the HTTP requests of applications/services 602 thatrequire IDCS services go through an Oracle Public Cloud BIG-IP appliance604 and an IDCS BIG-IP appliance 606 (or similar technologies such as aLoad Balancer, or a component called a Cloud Load Balancer as a Service(“LBaaS”) that implements appropriate security rules to protect thetraffic). However, the requests can be received in any manner. At IDCSBIG-IP appliance 606 (or, as applicable, a similar technology such as aLoad Balancer or a Cloud LBaaS), a cloud provisioning engine 608performs tenant and service orchestration. In one embodiment, cloudprovisioning engine 608 manages internal security artifacts associatedwith a new tenant being on-boarded into the cloud or a new serviceinstance purchased by a customer.

The HTTP requests are then received by an IDCS web routing tier 610 thatimplements a security gate (i.e., Cloud Gate) and provides servicerouting and microservices registration and discovery 612. Depending onthe service requested, the HTTP request is forwarded to an IDCSmicroservice in the IDCS middle tier 614. IDCS microservices processexternal and internal HTTP requests. IDCS microservices implementplatform services and infrastructure services. IDCS platform servicesare separately deployed Java-based runtime services implementing thebusiness of IDCS. IDCS infrastructure services are separately deployedruntime services providing infrastructure support for IDCS. IDCS furtherincludes infrastructure libraries that are common code packaged asshared libraries used by IDCS services and shared libraries.Infrastructure services and libraries provide supporting capabilities asrequired by platform services for implementing their functionality.

Platform Services

In one embodiment, IDCS supports standard authentication protocols,hence IDCS microservices include platform services such as OpenIDConnect, OAuth, SAML2, System for Cross-domain Identity Management++(“SCIM++”), etc.

The OpenID Connect platform service implements standard OpenID ConnectLogin/Logout flows. Interactive web-based and native applicationsleverage standard browser-based OpenID Connect flow to request userauthentication, receiving standard identity tokens that are JavaScriptObject Notation (“JSON”) Web Tokens (“JWTs”) conveying the user'sauthenticated identity. Internally, the runtime authentication model isstateless, maintaining the user's authentication/session state in theform of a host HTTP cookie (including the JWT identity token). Theauthentication interaction initiated via the OpenID Connect protocol isdelegated to a trusted SSO service that implements the user login/logoutceremonies for local and federated logins. Further details of thisfunctionality are disclosed below with reference to FIGS. 10 and 11. Inone embodiment, OpenID Connect functionality is implemented accordingto, for example, OpenID Foundation standards.

The OAuth2 platform service provides token authorization services. Itprovides a rich API infrastructure for creating and validating accesstokens conveying user rights to make API calls. It supports a range ofuseful token grant types, enabling customers to securely connect clientsto their services. It implements standard 2-legged and 3-legged OAuth2token grant types. Support for OpenID Connect (“OIDC”) enables compliantapplications (OIDC relaying parties (“RP”s)) to integrate with IDCS asthe identity provider (OIDC OpenID provider (“OP”)). Similarly, theintegration of IDCS as OIDC RP with social OIDC OP (e.g., Facebook,Google, etc.) enables customers to allow social identities policy-basedaccess to applications. In one embodiment, OAuth functionality isimplemented according to, for example, Internet Engineering Task Force(“IETF”), Request for Comments (“RFC”) 6749.

The SAML2 platform service provides identity federation services. Itenables customers to set up federation agreements with their partnersbased on SAML identity provider (“IDP”) and SAML service provider (“SP”)relationship models. In one embodiment, the SAML2 platform serviceimplements standard SAML2 Browser POST Login and Logout Profiles. In oneembodiment, SAML functionality is implemented according to, for example,IETF, RFC 7522.

SCIM is an open standard for automating the exchange of user identityinformation between identity domains or information technology (“IT”)systems, as provided by, e.g., IETF, RFCs 7642, 7643, 7644. The SCIM++platform service provides identity administration services and enablescustomers to access IDP features of IDCS. The administration servicesexpose a set of stateless REST interfaces (i.e., APIs) that coveridentity lifecycle, password management, group management, etc.,exposing such artifacts as web-accessible resources.

All IDCS configuration artifacts are resources, and the APIs of theadministration services allow for managing IDCS resources (e.g., users,roles, password policies, applications, SAML/OIDC identity providers,SAML service providers, keys, certifications, notification templates,etc.). Administration services leverage and extend the SCIM standard toimplement schema-based REST APIs for Create, Read, Update, Delete, andQuery (“CRUDQ”) operations on all IDCS resources. Additionally, allinternal resources of IDCS used for administration and configuration ofIDCS itself are exposed as SCIM-based REST APIs. Access to the identitystore 618 is isolated to the SCIM++ API.

In one embodiment, for example, the SCIM standard is implemented tomanage the users and groups resources as defined by the SCIMspecifications, while SCIM++ is configured to support additional IDCSinternal resources (e.g., password policies, roles, settings, etc.)using the language defined by the SCIM standard.

The Administration service supports the SCIM 2.0 standard endpoints withthe standard SCIM 2.0 core schemas and schema extensions where needed.In addition, the Administration service supports several SCIM 2.0compliant endpoint extensions to manage other IDCS resources, forexample, Users, Groups, Applications, Settings, etc. The Administrationservice also supports a set of remote procedure call-style (“RPC-style”)REST interfaces that do not perform CRUDQ operations but instead providea functional service, for example, “UserPasswordGenerator,”“UserPasswordValidator,” etc.

IDCS Administration APIs use the OAuth2 protocol for authentication andauthorization. IDCS supports common OAuth2 scenarios such as scenariosfor web server, mobile, and JavaScript applications. Access to IDCS APIsis protected by access tokens. To access IDCS Administration APIs, anapplication needs to be registered as an OAuth2 client or an IDCSApplication (in which case the OAuth2 client is created automatically)through the IDCS Administration console and be granted desired IDCSAdministration Roles. When making IDCS Administration API calls, theapplication first requests an access token from the IDCS OAuth2 Service.After acquiring the token, the application sends the access token to theIDCS API by including it in the HTTP authorization header. Applicationscan use IDCS Administration REST APIs directly, or use an IDCS JavaClient API Library.

Infrastructure Services

The IDCS infrastructure services support the functionality of IDCSplatform services. These runtime services include an event processingservice (for asynchronously processing user notifications, applicationsubscriptions, and auditing to database); a job scheduler service (forscheduling and executing jobs, e.g., executing immediately or at aconfigured time long-running tasks that do not require userintervention); a cache management service; a storage management service(for integrating with a public cloud storage service); a reports service(for generating reports and dashboards); an SSO service (for managinginternal user authentication and SSO); a user interface (“UI”) service(for hosting different types of UI clients); and a service managerservice. Service manager is an internal interface between the OraclePublic Cloud and IDCS. Service manager manages commands issued by theOracle Public Cloud, where the commands need to be implemented by IDCS.For example, when a customer signs up for an account in a cloud storebefore they can buy something, the cloud sends a request to IDCS askingto create a tenant. In this case, service manager implements the cloudspecific operations that the cloud expects IDCS to support.

An IDCS microservice may call another IDCS microservice through anetwork interface (i.e., an HTTP request).

In one embodiment, IDCS may also provide a schema service (or apersistence service) that allows for using a database schema. A schemaservice allows for delegating the responsibility of managing databaseschemas to IDCS. Accordingly, a user of IDCS does not need to manage adatabase since there is an IDCS service that provides thatfunctionality. For example, the user may use the database to persistschemas on a per tenant basis, and when there is no more space in thedatabase, the schema service will manage the functionality of obtaininganother database and growing the space so that the users do not have tomanage the database themselves.

IDCS further includes data stores which are data repositoriesrequired/generated by IDCS, including an identity store 618 (storingusers, groups, etc.), a global database 620 (storing configuration dataused by IDCS to configure itself), an operational schema 622 (providingper tenant schema separation and storing customer data on a per customerbasis), an audit schema 624 (storing audit data), a caching cluster 626(storing cached objects to speed up performance), etc. All internal andexternal IDCS consumers integrate with the identity services overstandards-based protocols. This enables use of a domain name system(“DNS”) to resolve where to route requests, and decouples consumingapplications from understanding the internal implementation of identityservices.

Real-Time and Near-Real-Time Tasks

IDCS separates the tasks of a requested service into synchronousreal-time and asynchronous near-real-time tasks, where real-time tasksinclude only the operations that are needed for the user to proceed. Inone embodiment, a real-time task is a task that is performed withminimal delay, and a near-real-time task is a task that is performed inthe background without the user having to wait for it. In oneembodiment, a real-time task is a task that is performed withsubstantially no delay or with negligible delay, and appears to a useras being performed almost instantaneously.

The real-time tasks perform the main business functionality of aspecific identity service. For example, when requesting a login service,an application sends a message to authenticate a user's credentials andget a session cookie in return. What the user experiences is logginginto the system. However, several other tasks may be performed inconnection with the user's logging in, such as validating who the useris, auditing, sending notifications, etc. Accordingly, validating thecredentials is a task that is performed in real-time so that the user isgiven an HTTP cookie to start a session, but the tasks related tonotifications (e.g., sending an email to notify the creation of anaccount), audits (e.g., tracking/recording), etc., are near-real-timetasks that can be performed asynchronously so that the user can proceedwith least delay.

When an HTTP request for a microservice is received, the correspondingreal-time tasks are performed by the microservice in the middle tier,and the remaining near-real-time tasks such as operational logic/eventsthat are not necessarily subject to real-time processing are offloadedto message queues 628 that support a highly scalable asynchronous eventmanagement system 630 with guaranteed delivery and processing.Accordingly, certain behaviors are pushed from the front end to thebackend to enable IDCS to provide high level service to the customers byreducing latencies in response times. For example, a login process mayinclude validation of credentials, submission of a log report, updatingof the last login time, etc., but these tasks can be offloaded to amessage queue and performed in near-real-time as opposed to real-time.

In one example, a system may need to register or create a new user. Thesystem calls an IDCS SCIM API to create a user. The end result is thatwhen the user is created in identity store 618, the user gets anotification email including a link to reset their password. When IDCSreceives a request to register or create a new user, the correspondingmicroservice looks at configuration data in the operational database(located in global database 620 in FIG. 6) and determines that the“create user” operation is marked with a “create user” event which isidentified in the configuration data as an asynchronous operation. Themicroservice returns to the client and indicates that the creation ofthe user is done successfully, but the actual sending of thenotification email is postponed and pushed to the backend. In order todo so, the microservice uses a messaging API 616 to queue the message inqueue 628 which is a store.

In order to dequeue queue 628, a messaging microservice, which is aninfrastructure microservice, continually runs in the background andscans queue 628 looking for events in queue 628. The events in queue 628are processed by event subscribers 630 such as audit, user notification,application subscriptions, data analytics, etc. Depending on the taskindicated by an event, event subscribers 630 may communicate with, forexample, audit schema 624, a user notification service 634, an identityevent subscriber 632, etc. For example, when the messaging microservicefinds the “create user” event in queue 628, it executes thecorresponding notification logic and sends the corresponding email tothe user.

In one embodiment, queue 628 queues operational events published bymicroservices 614 as well as resource events published by APIs 616 thatmanage IDCS resources.

IDCS uses a real-time caching structure to enhance system performanceand user experience. The cache itself may also be provided as amicroservice. IDCS implements an elastic cache cluster 626 that grows asthe number of customers supported by IDCS scales. Cache cluster 626 maybe implemented with a distributed data grid which is disclosed in moredetail below. In one embodiment, write-only resources bypass cache.

In one embodiment, IDCS runtime components publish health andoperational metrics to a public cloud monitoring module 636 thatcollects such metrics of a public cloud such as Oracle Public Cloud fromOracle Corp.

In one embodiment, IDCS may be used to create a user. For example, aclient application 602 may issue a REST API call to create a user. Adminservice (a platform service in 614) delegates the call to a user manager(an infrastructure library/service in 614), which in turn creates theuser in the tenant-specific ID store stripe in ID store 618. On “UserCreate Success”, the user manager audits the operation to the audittable in audit schema 624, and publishes an“identity.user.create.success” event to message queue 628. Identitysubscriber 632 picks up the event and sends a “Welcome” email to thenewly created user, including newly created login details.

In one embodiment, IDCS may be used to grant a role to a user, resultingin a user provisioning action. For example, a client application 602 mayissue a REST API call to grant a user a role. Admin service (a platformservice in 614) delegates the call to a role manager (an infrastructurelibrary/service in 614), who grants the user a role in thetenant-specific ID store stripe in ID store 618. On “Role GrantSuccess”, the role manager audits the operations to the audit table inaudit schema 624, and publishes an “identity.user.role.grant.success”event to message queue 628. Identity subscriber 632 picks up the eventand evaluates the provisioning grant policy. If there is an activeapplication grant on the role being granted, a provisioning subscriberperforms some validation, initiates account creation, calls out thetarget system, creates an account on the target system, and marks theaccount creation as successful. Each of these functionalities may resultin publishing of corresponding events, such as“prov.account.create.initiate”, “prov.target.create.initiate”,“prov.target.create.success”, or “prov.account.create.success”. Theseevents may have their own business metrics aggregating number ofaccounts created in the target system over the last N days.

In one embodiment, IDCS may be used for a user to log in. For example, aclient application 602 may use one of the supported authentication flowsto request a login for a user. IDCS authenticates the user, and uponsuccess, audits the operation to the audit table in audit schema 624.Upon failure, IDCS audits the failure in audit schema 624, and publishes“login.user.login.failure” event in message queue 628. A loginsubscriber picks up the event, updates its metrics for the user, anddetermines if additional analytics on the user's access history need tobe performed.

Accordingly, by implementing “inversion of control” functionality (e.g.,changing the flow of execution to schedule the execution of an operationat a later time so that the operation is under the control of anothersystem), embodiments enable additional event queues and subscribers tobe added dynamically to test new features on a small user sample beforedeploying to broader user base, or to process specific events forspecific internal or external customers.

Stateless Functionality

IDCS microservices are stateless, meaning the microservices themselvesdo not maintain state. “State” refers to the data that an applicationuses in order to perform its capabilities. IDCS provides multi-tenantfunctionality by persisting all state into tenant specific repositoriesin the IDCS data tier. The middle tier (i.e., the code that processesthe requests) does not have data stored in the same location as theapplication code. Accordingly, IDCS is highly scalable, bothhorizontally and vertically.

To scale vertically (or scale up/down) means to add resources to (orremove resources from) a single node in a system, typically involvingthe addition of CPUs or memory to a single computer. Verticalscalability allows an application to scale up to the limits of itshardware. To scale horizontally (or scale out/in) means to add morenodes to (or remove nodes from) a system, such as adding a new computerto a distributed software application. Horizontal scalability allows anapplication to scale almost infinitely, bound only by the amount ofbandwidth provided by the network.

Stateless-ness of the middle tier of IDCS makes it horizontally scalablejust by adding more CPUs, and the IDCS components that perform the workof the application do not need to have a designated physicalinfrastructure where a particular application is running. Stateless-nessof the IDCS middle tier makes IDCS highly available, even when providingidentity services to a very large number of customers/tenants. Each passthrough an IDCS application/service is focused on CPU usage only toperform the application transaction itself but not use hardware to storedata. Scaling is accomplished by adding more slices when the applicationis running, while data for the transaction is stored at a persistencelayer where more copies can be added when needed.

The IDCS web tier, middle tier, and data tier can each scaleindependently and separately. The web tier can be scaled to handle moreHTTP requests. The middle tier can be scaled to support more servicefunctionality. The data tier can be scaled to support more tenants.

IDCS Functional View

FIG. 6A is an example block diagram 600 b of a functional view of IDCSin one embodiment. In block diagram 600 b, the IDCS functional stackincludes services, shared libraries, and data stores. The servicesinclude IDCS platform services 640 b, IDCS premium services 650 b, andIDCS infrastructure services 662 b. In one embodiment, IDCS platformservices 640 b and IDCS premium services 650 b are separately deployedJava-based runtime services implementing the business of IDCS, and IDCSinfrastructure services 662 b are separately deployed runtime servicesproviding infrastructure support for IDCS. The shared libraries includeIDCS infrastructure libraries 680 b which are common code packaged asshared libraries used by IDCS services and shared libraries. The datastores are data repositories required/generated by IDCS, includingidentity store 698 b, global configuration 700 b, message store 702 b,global tenant 704 b, personalization settings 706 b, resources 708 b,user transient data 710 b, system transient data 712 b, per-tenantschemas (managed ExaData) 714 b, operational store (not shown), cachingstore (not shown), etc.

In one embodiment, IDCS platform services 640 b include, for example,OpenID Connect service 642 b, OAuth2 service 644 b, SAML2 service 646 b,and SCIM++ service 648 b. In one embodiment, IDCS premium servicesinclude, for example, cloud SSO and governance 652 b, enterprisegovernance 654 b, AuthN broker 656 b, federation broker 658 b, andprivate account management 660 b.

IDCS infrastructure services 662 b and IDCS infrastructure libraries 680b provide supporting capabilities as required by IDCS platform services640 b to do their work. In one embodiment, IDCS infrastructure services662 b include job scheduler 664 b, UI 666 b, SSO 668 b, reports 670 b,cache 672 b, storage 674 b, service manager 676 b (public cloudcontrol), and event processor 678 b (user notifications, appsubscriptions, auditing, data analytics). In one embodiment, IDCSinfrastructure libraries 680 b include data manager APIs 682 b, eventAPIs 684 b, storage APIs 686 b, authentication APIs 688 b, authorizationAPIs 690 b, cookie APIs 692 b, keys APIs 694 b, and credentials APIs 696b. In one embodiment, cloud compute service 602 b (internal Nimbula)supports the function of IDCS infrastructure services 662 b and IDCSinfrastructure libraries 680 b.

In one embodiment, IDCS provides various UIs 602 b for a consumer ofIDCS services, such as customer end user UI 604 b, customer admin UI 606b, DevOps admin UI 608 b, and login UI 610 b. In one embodiment, IDCSallows for integration 612 b of applications (e.g., customer apps 614 b,partner apps 616 b, and cloud apps 618 b) and firmware integration 620b. In one embodiment, various environments may integrate with IDCS tosupport their access control needs. Such integration may be provided by,for example, identity bridge 622 b (providing AD integration, WNA, andSCIM connector), Apache agent 624 b, or MSFT agent 626 b.

In one embodiment, internal and external IDCS consumers integrate withthe identity services of IDCS over standards-based protocols 628 b, suchas OpenID Connect 630 b, OAuth2 632 b, SAML2 634 b, SCIM 636 b, andREST/HTTP 638 b. This enables use of a domain name system (“DNS”) toresolve where to route requests, and decouples the consumingapplications from understanding internal implementation of the identityservices.

The IDCS functional view in FIG. 6A further includes public cloudinfrastructure services that provide common functionality that IDCSdepends on for user notifications (cloud notification service 718 b),file storage (cloud storage service 716 b), and metrics/alerting forDevOps (cloud monitoring service (EM) 722 b and cloud metrics service(Graphite) 720 b).

Cloud Gate

In one embodiment, IDCS implements a “Cloud Gate” in the web tier. CloudGate is a web server plugin that enables web applications to externalizeuser SSO to an identity management system (e.g., IDCS), similar toWebGate or WebAgent technologies that work with enterprise IDM stacks.Cloud Gate acts as a security gatekeeper that secures access to IDCSAPIs. In one embodiment, Cloud Gate is implemented by a web/proxy serverplugin that provides a web Policy Enforcement Point (“PEP”) forprotecting HTTP resources based on OAuth.

FIG. 7 is a block diagram 700 of an embodiment that implements a CloudGate 702 running in a web server 712 and acting as a Policy EnforcementPoint (“PEP”) configured to integrate with IDCS Policy Decision Point(“PDP”) using open standards (e.g., OAuth2, OpenID Connect, etc.) whilesecuring access to web browser and REST API resources 714 of anapplication. In some embodiments, the PDP is implemented at OAuth and/orOpenID Connect microservices 704. For example, when a user browser 706sends a request to IDCS for a login of a user 710, a corresponding IDCSPDP validates the credentials and then decides whether the credentialsare sufficient (e.g., whether to request for further credentials such asa second password). In the embodiment of FIG. 7, Cloud Gate 702 may actboth as the PEP and as the PDP since it has a local policy.

As part of one-time deployment, Cloud Gate 702 is registered with IDCSas an OAuth2 client, enabling it to request OIDC and OAuth2 operationsagainst IDCS. Thereafter, it maintains configuration information aboutan application's protected and unprotected resources, subject to requestmatching rules (how to match URLs, e.g., with wild cards, regularexpressions, etc.). Cloud Gate 702 can be deployed to protect differentapplications having different security policies, and the protectedapplications can be multi-tenant.

During web browser-based user access, Cloud Gate 702 acts as an OIDC RP718 initiating a user authentication flow. If user 710 has no validlocal user session, Cloud Gate 702 re-directs the user to the SSOmicroservice and participates in the OIDC “Authorization Code” flow withthe SSO microservice. The flow concludes with the delivery of a JWT asan identity token. Cloud Gate 708 validates the JWT (e.g., looks atsignature, expiration, destination/audience, etc.) and issues a localsession cookie for user 710. It acts as a session manager 716 securingweb browser access to protected resources and issuing, updating, andvalidating the local session cookie. It also provides a logout URL forremoval of its local session cookie.

Cloud Gate 702 also acts as an HTTP Basic Auth authenticator, validatingHTTP Basic Auth credentials against IDCS. This behavior is supported inboth session-less and session-based (local session cookie) modes. Noserver-side IDCS session is created in this case.

During programmatic access by REST API clients 708, Cloud Gate 702 mayact as an OAuth2 resource server/filter 720 for an application'sprotected REST APIs 714. It checks for the presence of a request with anauthorization header and an access token. When client 708 (e.g., mobile,web apps, JavaScript, etc.) presents an access token (issued by IDCS) touse with a protected REST API 714, Cloud Gate 702 validates the accesstoken before allowing access to the API (e.g., signature, expiration,audience, etc.). The original access token is passed along unmodified.

Generally, OAuth is used to generate either a client identitypropagation token (e.g., indicating who the client is) or a useridentity propagation token (e.g., indicating who the user is). In theembodiments, the implementation of OAuth in Cloud Gate is based on a JWTwhich defines a format for web tokens, as provided by, e.g., IETF, RFC7519.

When a user logs in, a JWT is issued. The JWT is signed by IDCS andsupports multi-tenant functionality in IDCS. Cloud Gate validates theJWT issued by IDCS to allow for multi-tenant functionality in IDCS.Accordingly, IDCS provides multi-tenancy in the physical structure aswell as in the logical business process that underpins the securitymodel.

Tenancy Types

IDCS specifies three types of tenancies: customer tenancy, clienttenancy, and user tenancy. Customer or resource tenancy specifies whothe customer of IDCS is (i.e., for whom is the work being performed).Client tenancy specifies which client application is trying to accessdata (i.e., what application is doing the work). User tenancy specifieswhich user is using the application to access data (i.e., by whom is thework being performed). For example, when a professional services companyprovides system integration functionality for a warehouse club and usesIDCS for providing identity management for the warehouse club systems,user tenancy corresponds to the professional services company, clienttenancy is the application that is used to provide system integrationfunctionality, and customer tenancy is the warehouse club.

Separation and identification of these three tenancies enablesmulti-tenant functionality in a cloud-based service. Generally, foron-premise software that is installed on a physical machine on-premise,there is no need to specify three different tenancies since a user needsto be physically on the machine to log in. However, in a cloud-basedservice structure, embodiments use tokens to determine who is using whatapplication to access which resources. The three tenancies are codifiedby tokens, enforced by Cloud Gate, and used by the business services inthe middle tier. In one embodiment, an OAuth server generates thetokens. In various embodiments, the tokens may be used in conjunctionwith any security protocol other than OAuth.

Decoupling user, client, and resource tenancies provides substantialbusiness advantages for the users of the services provided by IDCS. Forexample, it allows a service provider that understands the needs of abusiness (e.g., a healthcare business) and their identity managementproblems to buy services provided by IDCS, develop their own backendapplication that consumes the services of IDCS, and provide the backendapplications to the target businesses. Accordingly, the service providermay extend the services of IDCS to provide their desired capabilitiesand offer those to certain target businesses. The service provider doesnot have to build and run software to provide identity services but caninstead extend and customize the services of IDCS to suit the needs ofthe target businesses.

Some known systems only account for a single tenancy which is customertenancy. However, such systems are inadequate when dealing with accessby a combination of users such as customer users, customer's partners,customer's clients, clients themselves, or clients that customer hasdelegated access to. Defining and enforcing multiple tenancies in theembodiments facilitates the identity management functionality over suchvariety of users.

In one embodiment, one entity of IDCS does not belong to multipletenants at the same time; it belongs to only one tenant, and a “tenancy”is where artifacts live. Generally, there are multiple components thatimplement certain functions, and these components can belong to tenantsor they can belong to infrastructure. When infrastructure needs to acton behalf of tenants, it interacts with an entity service on behalf ofthe tenant. In that case, infrastructure itself has its own tenancy andcustomer has its own tenancy. When a request is submitted, there can bemultiple tenancies involved in the request.

For example, a client that belongs to “tenant 1” may execute a requestto get a token for “tenant 2” specifying a user in “tenant 3.” Asanother example, a user living in “tenant 1” may need to perform anaction in an application owned by “tenant 2”. Thus, the user needs to goto the resource namespace of “tenant 2” and request a token forthemselves. Accordingly, delegation of authority is accomplished byidentifying “who” can do “what” to “whom.” As yet another example, afirst user working for a first organization (“tenant 1”) may allow asecond user working for a second organization (“tenant 2”) to haveaccess to a document hosted by a third organization (“tenant 3”).

In one example, a client in “tenant 1” may request an access token for auser in “tenant 2” to access an application in “tenant 3”. The clientmay do so by invoking an OAuth request for the token by going to“http://tenant3/oauth/token”. The client identifies itself as a clientthat lives in “tenant 1” by including a “client assertion” in therequest. The client assertion includes a client ID (e.g., “client 1”)and the client tenancy “tenant 1”. As “client 1” in “tenant 1”, theclient has the right to invoke a request for a token on “tenant 3”, andthe client wants the token for a user in “tenant 2”. Accordingly, a“user assertion” is also passed as part of the same HTTP request. Theaccess token that is generated will be issued in the context of thetarget tenancy which is the application tenancy (“tenant 3”) and willinclude the user tenancy (“tenant 2”).

In one embodiment, in the data tier, each tenant is implemented as aseparate stripe. From a data management perspective, artifacts live in atenant. From a service perspective, a service knows how to work withdifferent tenants, and the multiple tenancies are different dimensionsin the business function of a service. FIG. 8 illustrates an examplesystem 800 implementing multiple tenancies in an embodiment. System 800includes a client 802 that requests a service provided by a microservice804 that understands how to work with data in a database 806. Thedatabase includes multiple tenants 808 and each tenant includes theartifacts of the corresponding tenancy. In one embodiment, microservice804 is an OAuth microservice requested throughhttps://tenant3/oauth/token for getting a token. The function of theOAuth microservice is performed in microservice 804 using data fromdatabase 806 to verify that the request of client 802 is legitimate, andif it is legitimate, use the data from different tenancies 808 toconstruct the token. Accordingly, system 800 is multi-tenant in that itcan work in a cross-tenant environment by not only supporting servicescoming into each tenancy, but also supporting services that can act onbehalf of different tenants.

System 800 is advantageous since microservice 804 is physicallydecoupled from the data in database 806, and by replicating the dataacross locations that are closer to the client, microservice 804 can beprovided as a local service to the clients and system 800 can manage theavailability of the service and provide it globally.

In one embodiment, microservice 804 is stateless, meaning that themachine that runs microservice 804 does not maintain any markerspointing the service to any specific tenants. Instead, a tenancy may bemarked, for example, on the host portion of a URL of a request thatcomes in. That tenancy points to one of tenants 808 in database 806.When supporting a large number of tenants (e.g., millions of tenants),microservice 804 cannot have the same number of connections to database806, but instead uses a connection pool 810 which provides the actualphysical connections to database 806 in the context of a database user.

Generally, connections are built by supplying an underlying driver orprovider with a connection string, which is used to address a specificdatabase or server and to provide instance and user authenticationcredentials (e.g., “Server=sql_box;Database=Common;UserID=uid;Pwd=password;”). Once a connection has been built, it can beopened and closed, and properties (e.g., the command time-out length, ortransaction, if one exists) can be set. The connection string includes aset of key-value pairs, dictated by the data access interface of thedata provider. A connection pool is a cache of database connectionsmaintained so that the connections can be reused when future requests toa database are required. In connection pooling, after a connection iscreated, it is placed in the pool and it is used again so that a newconnection does not have to be established. For example, when thereneeds to be ten connections between microservice 804 and database 808,there will be ten open connections in connection pool 810, all in thecontext of a database user (e.g., in association with a specificdatabase user, e.g., who is the owner of that connection, whosecredentials are being validated, is it a database user, is it a systemcredential, etc.).

The connections in connection pool 810 are created for a system userthat can access anything. Therefore, in order to correctly handleauditing and privileges by microservice 804 processing requests onbehalf of a tenant, the database operation is performed in the contextof a “proxy user” 812 associated with the schema owner assigned to thespecific tenant. This schema owner can access only the tenancy that theschema was created for, and the value of the tenancy is the value of theschema owner. When a request is made for data in database 806,microservice 804 uses the connections in connection pool 810 to providethat data. Accordingly, multi-tenancy is achieved by having stateless,elastic middle tier services process incoming requests in the context of(e.g., in association with) the tenant-specific data store bindingestablished on a per request basis on top of the data connection createdin the context of (e.g., in association with) the data store proxy userassociated with the resource tenancy, and the database can scaleindependently of the services.

The following provides an example functionality for implementing proxyuser 812:

dbOperation=<prepare DB command to execute>

dbConnection=getDBConnectionFromPool( )

dbConnection.setProxyUser (resourceTenant)

result=dbConnection.executeOperation (dbOperation)

In this functionality, microservice 804 sets the “Proxy User” setting onthe connection pulled from connection pool 810 to the “Tenant,” andperforms the database operation in the context of the tenant while usingthe database connection in connection pool 810.

When striping every table to configure different columns in a samedatabase for different tenants, one table may include all tenants' datamixed together. In contrast, one embodiment provides a tenant-drivendata tier. The embodiment does not stripe the same database fordifferent tenants, but instead provides a different physical databaseper tenant. For example, multi-tenancy may be implemented by using apluggable database (e.g., Oracle Database 12c from Oracle Corp.) whereeach tenant is allocated a separate partition. At the data tier, aresource manager processes the request and then asks for the data sourcefor the request (separate from metadata). The embodiment performsruntime switch to a respective data source/store per request. Byisolating each tenant's data from the other tenants, the embodimentprovides improved data security.

In one embodiment, various tokens codify different tenancies. A URLtoken may identify the tenancy of the application that requests aservice. An identity token may codify the identity of a user that is tobe authenticated. An access token may identify multiple tenancies. Forexample, an access token may codify the tenancy that is the target ofsuch access (e.g., an application tenancy) as well as the user tenancyof the user that is given access. A client assertion token may identifya client ID and the client tenancy. A user-assertion token may identifythe user and the user tenancy.

In one embodiment, an identity token includes at least a claim/statementindicating the user tenant name (i.e., where the user lives). A “claim”(as used by one of ordinary skill in the security field) in connectionwith authorization tokens is a statement that one subject makes aboutitself or another subject. The statement can be about a name, identity,key, group, privilege, or capability, for example. Claims are issued bya provider, and they are given one or more values and then packaged insecurity tokens that are issued by an issuer, commonly known as asecurity token service (“STS”).

In one embodiment, an access token includes at least a claim/statementindicating the resource tenant name at the time the request for theaccess token was made (e.g., the customer), a claim indicating the usertenant name, a claim indicating the name of the OAuth client making therequest, and a claim indicating the client tenant name. In oneembodiment, an access token may be implemented according to thefollowing JSON functionality:

{  ...  ″ tok_type ″ : ″AT″,  ″user_id″ : ″testuser″,  ″user_tenantname″: ″<value-of-identity-tenant>″  “tenant” : “<value-of-resource-tenant>” “client_id” : “testclient”,  “client_tenantname”:“<value-of-client-tenant>”  ... }

In one embodiment, a client assertion token includes at least a claimindicating the client tenant name, and a claim indicating the name ofthe OAuth client making the request.

The tokens and/or multiple tenancies described herein may be implementedin any multi-tenant cloud-based service other than IDCS. For example,the tokens and/or multiple tenancies described herein may be implementedin SaaS or Enterprise Resource Planning (“ERP”) services.

FIG. 9 is a block diagram of a network view 900 of IDCS in oneembodiment. FIG. 9 illustrates network interactions that are performedin one embodiment between application “zones” 904. Applications arebroken into zones based on the required level of protection and theimplementation of connections to various other systems (e.g., SSL zone,no SSL zone, etc.). Some application zones provide services that requireaccess from the inside of IDCS, while some application zones provideservices that require access from the outside of IDCS, and some are openaccess. Accordingly, a respective level of protection is enforced foreach zone.

In the embodiment of FIG. 9, service to service communication isperformed using HTTP requests. In one embodiment, IDCS uses the accesstokens described herein not only to provide services but also to secureaccess to and within IDCS itself. In one embodiment, IDCS microservicesare exposed through RESTful interfaces and secured by the tokensdescribed herein.

In the embodiment of FIG. 9, any one of a variety ofapplications/services 902 may make HTTP calls to IDCS APIs to use IDCSservices. In one embodiment, the HTTP requests of applications/services902 go through an Oracle Public Cloud Load Balancing External Virtual IPaddress (“VIP”) 906 (or other similar technologies), a public cloud webrouting tier 908, and an IDCS Load Balancing Internal VIP appliance 910(or other similar technologies), to be received by IDCS web routing tier912. IDCS web routing tier 912 receives the requests coming in from theoutside or from the inside of IDCS and routes them across either an IDCSplatform services tier 914 or an IDCS infrastructure services tier 916.IDCS platform services tier 914 includes IDCS microservices that areinvoked from the outside of IDCS, such as OpenID Connect, OAuth, SAML,SCIM, etc. IDCS infrastructure services tier 916 includes supportingmicroservices that are invoked from the inside of IDCS to support thefunctionality of other IDCS microservices. Examples of IDCSinfrastructure microservices are UI, SSO, reports, cache, job scheduler,service manager, functionality for making keys, etc. An IDCS cache tier926 supports caching functionality for IDCS platform services tier 914and IDCS infrastructure services tier 916.

By enforcing security both for outside access to IDCS and within IDCS,customers of IDCS can be provided with outstanding security compliancefor the applications they run.

In the embodiment of FIG. 9, other than the data tier 918 whichcommunicates based on Structured Query Language (“SQL”) and the ID storetier 920 that communicates based on LDAP, OAuth protocol is used toprotect the communication among IDCS components (e.g., microservices)within IDCS, and the same tokens that are used for securing access fromthe outside of IDCS are also used for security within IDCS. That is, webrouting tier 912 uses the same tokens and protocols for processing therequests it receives regardless of whether a request is received fromthe outside of IDCS or from the inside of IDCS. Accordingly, IDCSprovides a single consistent security model for protecting the entiresystem, thereby allowing for outstanding security compliance since thefewer security models implemented in a system, the more secure thesystem is.

In the IDCS cloud environment, applications communicate by makingnetwork calls. The network call may be based on an applicable networkprotocol such as HTTP, Transmission Control Protocol (“TCP”), UserDatagram Protocol (“UDP”), etc. For example, an application “X” maycommunicate with an application “Y” based on HTTP by exposingapplication “Y” as an HTTP Uniform Resource Locator (“URL”). In oneembodiment, “Y” is an IDCS microservice that exposes a number ofresources each corresponding to a capability. When “X” (e.g., anotherIDCS microservice) needs to call “Y”, it constructs a URL that includes“Y” and the resource/capability that needs to be invoked (e.g.,https:/host/Y/resource), and makes a corresponding REST call which goesthrough web routing tier 912 and gets directed to “Y”.

In one embodiment, a caller outside the IDCS may not need to know where“Y” is, but web routing tier 912 needs to know where application “Y” isrunning. In one embodiment, IDCS implements discovery functionality(implemented by an API of OAuth service) to determine where eachapplication is running so that there is no need for the availability ofstatic routing information.

In one embodiment, an enterprise manager (“EM”) 922 provides a “singlepane of glass” that extends on-premise and cloud-based management toIDCS. In one embodiment, a “Chef” server 924 which is a configurationmanagement tool from Chef Software, Inc., provides configurationmanagement functionality for various IDCS tiers. In one embodiment, aservice deployment infrastructure and/or a persistent stored module 928may send OAuth2 HTTP messages to IDCS web routing tier 912 for tenantlifecycle management operations, public cloud lifecycle managementoperations, or other operations. In one embodiment, IDCS infrastructureservices tier 916 may send ID/password HTTP messages to a public cloudnotification service 930 or a public cloud storage service 932.

Cloud Access Control—SSO

One embodiment supports lightweight cloud standards for implementing acloud scale SSO service. Examples of lightweight cloud standards areHTTP, REST, and any standard that provides access through a browser(since a web browser is lightweight). On the contrary, SOAP is anexample of a heavy cloud standard which requires more management,configuration, and tooling to build a client with. The embodiment usesOpenID Connect semantics for applications to request user authenticationagainst IDCS. The embodiment uses lightweight HTTP cookie-based usersession tracking to track user's active sessions at IDCS withoutstatefull server-side session support. The embodiment uses JWT-basedidentity tokens for applications to use in mapping an authenticatedidentity back to their own local session. The embodiment supportsintegration with federated identity management systems, and exposes SAMLIDP support for enterprise deployments to request user authenticationagainst IDCS.

FIG. 10 is a block diagram 1000 of a system architecture view of SSOfunctionality in IDCS in one embodiment. The embodiment enables clientapplications to leverage standards-based web protocols to initiate userauthentication flows. Applications requiring SSO integration with acloud system may be located in enterprise data centers, in remotepartner data centers, or even operated by a customer on-premise. In oneembodiment, different IDCS platform services implement the business ofSSO, such as OpenID Connect for processing login/logout requests fromconnected native applications (i.e., applications utilizing OpenIDConnect to integrate with IDCS); SAML IDP service for processingbrowser-based login/logout requests from connected applications; SAML SPservice for orchestrating user authentication against an external SAMLIDP; and an internal IDCS SSO service for orchestrating end user loginceremony including local or federated login flows, and for managing IDCShost session cookie. Generally, HTTP works either with a form or withouta form. When it works with a form, the form is seen within a browser.When it works without a form, it functions as a client to servercommunication. Both OpenID Connect and SAML require the ability torender a form, which may be accomplished by presence of a browser orvirtually performed by an application that acts as if there is abrowser. In one embodiment, an application client implementing userauthentication/SSO through IDCS needs to be registered in IDCS as anOAuth2 client and needs to obtain client identifier and credentials(e.g., ID/password, ID/certificate, etc.).

The example embodiment of FIG. 10 includes threecomponents/microservices that collectively provide login capabilities,including two platform microservices: OAuth2 1004 and SAML2 1006, andone infrastructure microservice: SSO 1008. In the embodiment of FIG. 10,IDCS provides an “Identity Metasystem” in which SSO services 1008 areprovided over different types of applications, such as browser based webor native applications 1010 requiring 3-legged OAuth flow and acting asan OpenID Connect relaying party (“RP,” an application that outsourcesits user authentication function to an IDP), native applications 1011requiring 2-legged OAuth flow and acting as an OpenID Connect RP, andweb applications 1012 acting as a SAML SP.

Generally, an Identity Metasystem is an interoperable architecture fordigital identity, allowing for employing a collection of digitalidentities based on multiple underlying technologies, implementations,and providers. LDAP, SAML, and OAuth are examples of different securitystandards that provide identity capability and can be the basis forbuilding applications, and an Identity Metasystem may be configured toprovide a unified security system over such applications. The LDAPsecurity model specifies a specific mechanism for handling identity, andall passes through the system are to be strictly protected. SAML wasdeveloped to allow one set of applications securely exchange informationwith another set of applications that belong to a different organizationin a different security domain. Since there is no trust between the twoapplications, SAML was developed to allow for one application toauthenticate another application that does not belong to the sameorganization. OAuth provides OpenID Connect that is a lightweightprotocol for performing web based authentication.

In the embodiment of FIG. 10, when an OpenID application 1010 connectsto an OpenID server in IDCS, its “channels” request SSO service.Similarly, when a SAML application 1012 connects to a SAML server inIDCS, its “channels” also request SSO service. In IDCS, a respectivemicroservice (e.g., an OpenID microservice 1004 and a SAML microservice1006) will handle each of the applications, and these microservicesrequest SSO capability from SSO microservice 1008. This architecture canbe expanded to support any number of other security protocols by addinga microservice for each protocol and then using SSO microservice 1008for SSO capability. SSO microservice 1008 issues the sessions (i.e., anSSO cookie 1014 is provided) and is the only system in the architecturethat has the authority to issue a session. An IDCS session is realizedthrough the use of SSO cookie 1014 by browser 1002. Browser 1002 alsouses a local session cookie 1016 to manage its local session.

In one embodiment, for example, within a browser, a user may use a firstapplication based on SAML and get logged in, and later use a secondapplication built with a different protocol such as OAuth. The user isprovided with SSO on the second application within the same browser.Accordingly, the browser is the state or user agent and maintains thecookies.

In one embodiment, SSO microservice 1008 provides login ceremony 1018,ID/password recovery 1020, first time login flow 1022, an authenticationmanager 1024, an HTTP cookie manager 1026, and an event manager 1028.Login ceremony 1018 implements SSO functionality based on customersettings and/or application context, and may be configured according toa local form (i.e., basic Auth), an external SAML IDP, an external OIDCIDP, etc. ID/password recovery 1020 is used to recover a user's IDand/or password. First time login flow 1022 is implemented when a userlogs in for the first time (i.e., an SSO session does not yet exist).Authentication manager 1024 issues authentication tokens upon successfulauthentication. HTTP cookie manager 1026 saves the authentication tokenin an SSO cookie. Event manager 1028 publishes events related to SSOfunctionality.

In one embodiment, interactions between OAuth microservice 1004 and SSOmicroservice 1008 are based on browser redirects so that SSOmicroservice 1008 challenges the user using an HTML form, validatescredentials, and issues a session cookie.

In one embodiment, for example, OAuth microservice 1004 may receive anauthorization request from browser 1002 to authenticate a user of anapplication according to 3-legged OAuth flow. OAuth microservice 1004then acts as an OIDC provider 1030, redirects browser 1002 to SSOmicroservice 1008, and passes along application context. Depending onwhether the user has a valid SSO session or not, SSO microservice 1008either validates the existing session or performs a login ceremony. Uponsuccessful authentication or validation, SSO microservice 1008 returnsauthentication context to OAuth microservice 1004. OAuth microservice1004 then redirects browser 1002 to a callback URL with an authorization(“AZ”) code. Browser 1002 sends the AZ code to OAuth microservice 1004to request the required tokens 1032. Browser 1002 also includes itsclient credentials (obtained when registering in IDCS as an OAuth2client) in the HTTP authorization header. OAuth microservice 1004 inreturn provides the required tokens 1032 to browser 1002. In oneembodiment, tokens 1032 provided to browser 1002 include JW identity andaccess tokens signed by the IDCS OAuth2 server. Further details of thisfunctionality are disclosed below with reference to FIG. 11.

In one embodiment, for example, OAuth microservice 1004 may receive anauthorization request from a native application 1011 to authenticate auser according to a 2-legged OAuth flow. In this case, an authenticationmanager 1034 in OAuth microservice 1004 performs the correspondingauthentication (e.g., based on ID/password received from a client 1011)and a token manager 1036 issues a corresponding access token uponsuccessful authentication.

In one embodiment, for example, SAML microservice 1006 may receive anSSO POST request from a browser to authenticate a user of a webapplication 1012 that acts as a SAML SP. SAML microservice 1006 thenacts as a SAML IDP 1038, redirects browser 1002 to SSO microservice1008, and passes along application context. Depending on whether theuser has a valid SSO session or not, SSO microservice 1008 eithervalidates the existing session or performs a login ceremony. Uponsuccessful authentication or validation, SSO microservice 1008 returnsauthentication context to SAML microservice 1006. SAML microservice thenredirects to the SP with required tokens.

In one embodiment, for example, SAML microservice 1006 may act as a SAMLSP 1040 and go to a remote SAML IDP 1042 (e.g., an active directoryfederation service (“ADFS”)). One embodiment implements the standardSAML/AD flows. In one embodiment, interactions between SAML microservice1006 and SSO microservice 1008 are based on browser redirects so thatSSO microservice 1008 challenges the user using an HTML form, validatescredentials, and issues a session cookie.

In one embodiment, the interactions between a component within IDCS(e.g., 1004, 1006, 1008) and a component outside IDCS (e.g., 1002, 1011,1042) are performed through firewalls 1044.

Login/Logout Flow

FIG. 11 is a message sequence flow 1100 of SSO functionality provided byIDCS in one embodiment. When a user uses a browser 1102 to access aclient 1106 (e.g., a browser-based application or a mobile/nativeapplication), Cloud Gate 1104 acts as an application enforcement pointand enforces a policy defined in a local policy text file. If Cloud Gate1104 detects that the user has no local application session, it requiresthe user to be authenticated. In order to do so, Cloud Gate 1104redirects browser 1102 to OAuth2 microservice 1110 to initiate OpenIDConnect login flow against the OAuth2 microservice 1110 (3-legged AZGrant flow with scopes=“openid profile”).

The request of browser 1102 traverses IDCS routing tier web service 1108and Cloud Gate 1104 and reaches OAuth2 microservice 1110. OAuth2microservice 1110 constructs the application context (i.e., metadatathat describes the application, e.g., identity of the connectingapplication, client ID, configuration, what the application can do,etc.), and redirects browser 1102 to SSO microservice 1112 to log in.

If the user has a valid SSO session, SSO microservice 1112 validates theexisting session without starting a login ceremony. If the user does nothave a valid SSO session (i.e., no session cookie exists), the SSOmicroservice 1112 initiates the user login ceremony in accordance withcustomer's login preferences (e.g., displaying a branded login page). Inorder to do so, the SSO microservice 1112 redirects browser 1102 to alogin application service 1114 implemented in JavaScript. Loginapplication service 1114 provides a login page in browser 1102. Browser1102 sends a REST POST to the SSO microservice 1112 including logincredentials. The SSO microservice 1112 generates an access token andsends it to Cloud Gate 1104 in a REST POST. Cloud Gate 1104 sends theauthentication information to Admin SCIM microservice 1116 to validatethe user's password. Admin SCIM microservice 1116 determines successfulauthentication and sends a corresponding message to SSO microservice1112.

In one embodiment, during the login ceremony, the login page does notdisplay a consent page, as “login” operation requires no furtherconsent. Instead, a privacy policy is stated on the login page,informing the user about certain profile attributes being exposed toapplications. During the login ceremony, the SSO microservice 1112respects customer's IDP preferences, and if configured, redirects to theIDP for authentication against the configured IDP.

Upon successful authentication or validation, SSO microservice 1112redirects browser 1102 back to OAuth2 microservice 1110 with the newlycreated/updated SSO host HTTP cookie (e.g., the cookie that is createdin the context of the host indicated by “HOSTURL”) containing the user'sauthentication token. OAuth2 microservice 1110 returns AZ Code (e.g., anOAuth concept) back to browser 1102 and redirects to Cloud Gate 1104.Browser 1102 sends AZ Code to Cloud Gate 1104, and Cloud Gate 1104 sendsa REST POST to OAuth2 microservice 1110 to request the access token andthe identity token. Both tokens are scoped to OAuth microservice 1110(indicated by the audience token claim). Cloud Gate 1104 receives thetokens from OAuth2 microservice 1110.

Cloud Gate 1104 uses the identity token to map the user's authenticatedidentity to its internal account representation, and it may save thismapping in its own HTTP cookie. Cloud Gate 1104 then redirects browser1102 to client 1106. Browser 1102 then reaches client 1106 and receivesa corresponding response from client 1106. From this point on, browser1102 can access the application (i.e., client 1106) seamlessly for aslong as the application's local cookie is valid. Once the local cookiebecomes invalid, the authentication process is repeated.

Cloud Gate 1104 further uses the access token received in a request toobtain “userinfo” from OAuth2 microservice 1110 or the SCIMmicroservice. The access token is sufficient to access the “userinfo”resource for the attributes allowed by the “profile” scope. It is alsosufficient to access “/me” resources via the SCIM microservice. In oneembodiment, by default, the received access token is only good for userprofile attributes that are allowed under the “profile” scope. Access toother profile attributes is authorized based on additional (optional)scopes submitted in the AZ grant login request issued by Cloud Gate1104.

When the user accesses another OAuth2 integrated connecting application,the same process repeats.

In one embodiment, the SSO integration architecture uses a similarOpenID Connect user authentication flow for browser-based user logouts.In one embodiment, a user with an existing application session accessesCloud Gate 1104 to initiate a logout. Alternatively, the user may haveinitiated the logout on the IDCS side. Cloud Gate 1104 terminates theapplication-specific user session, and initiates OAuth2 OpenID Provider(“OP”) logout request against OAuth2 microservice 1110. OAuth2microservice 1110 redirects to SSO microservice 1112 that kills theuser's host SSO cookie. SSO microservice 1112 initiates a set ofredirects (OAuth2 OP and SAML IDP) against known logout endpoints astracked in user's SSO cookie.

In one embodiment, if Cloud Gate 1104 uses SAML protocol to request userauthentication (e.g., login), a similar process starts between the SAMLmicroservice and SSO microservice 1112.

Cloud Cache

One embodiment provides a service/capability referred to as Cloud Cache.Cloud Cache is provided in IDCS to support communication withapplications that are LDAP based (e.g., email servers, calendar servers,some business applications, etc.) since IDCS does not communicateaccording to LDAP while such applications are configured to communicateonly based on LDAP. Typically, cloud directories are exposed via RESTAPIs and do not communicate according to the LDAP protocol. Generally,managing LDAP connections across corporate firewalls requires specialconfigurations that are difficult to set up and manage.

To support LDAP based applications, Cloud Cache translates LDAPcommunications to a protocol suitable for communication with a cloudsystem. Generally, an LDAP based application uses a database via LDAP.An application may be alternatively configured to use a database via adifferent protocol such as SQL. However, LDAP provides a hierarchicalrepresentation of resources in tree structures, while SQL representsdata as tables and fields. Accordingly, LDAP may be more desirable forsearching functionality, while SQL may be more desirable fortransactional functionality.

In one embodiment, services provided by IDCS may be used in an LDAPbased application to, for example, authenticate a user of theapplications (i.e., an identity service) or enforce a security policyfor the application (i.e., a security service). In one embodiment, theinterface with IDCS is through a firewall and based on HTTP (e.g.,REST). Typically, corporate firewalls do not allow access to internalLDAP communication even if the communication implements Secure SocketsLayer (“SSL”), and do not allow a TCP port to be exposed through thefirewall. However, Cloud Cache translates between LDAP and HTTP to allowLDAP based applications reach services provided by IDCS, and thefirewall will be open for HTTP.

Generally, an LDAP directory may be used in a line of business such asmarketing and development, and defines users, groups, works, etc. In oneexample, a marketing and development business may have differenttargeted customers, and for each customer, may have their ownapplications, users, groups, works, etc. Another example of a line ofbusiness that may run an LDAP cache directory is a wireless serviceprovider. In this case, each call made by a user of the wireless serviceprovider authenticates the user's device against the LDAP directory, andsome of the corresponding information in the LDAP directory may besynchronized with a billing system. In these examples, LDAP providesfunctionality to physically segregate content that is being searched atruntime.

In one example, a wireless service provider may handle its own identitymanagement services for their core business (e.g., regular calls), whileusing services provided by IDCS in support of a short term marketingcampaign. In this case, Cloud Cache “flattens” LDAP when it has a singleset of users and a single set of groups that it runs against the cloud.In one embodiment, any number of Cloud Caches may be implemented inIDCS.

Distributed Data Grid

In one embodiment, the cache cluster in IDCS is implemented based on adistributed data grid, as disclosed, for example, in U.S. Pat. Pub. No.2016/0092540, the disclosure of which is hereby incorporated byreference. A distributed data grid is a system in which a collection ofcomputer servers work together in one or more clusters to manageinformation and related operations, such as computations, within adistributed or clustered environment. A distributed data grid can beused to manage application objects and data that are shared across theservers. A distributed data grid provides low response time, highthroughput, predictable scalability, continuous availability, andinformation reliability. In particular examples, distributed data grids,such as, e.g., the Oracle Coherence data grid from Oracle Corp., storeinformation in-memory to achieve higher performance, and employredundancy in keeping copies of that information synchronized acrossmultiple servers, thus ensuring resiliency of the system and continuedavailability of the data in the event of failure of a server.

In one embodiment, IDCS implements a distributed data grid such asCoherence so that every microservice can request access to shared cacheobjects without getting blocked. Coherence is a proprietary Java-basedin-memory data grid, designed to have better reliability, scalability,and performance than traditional relational database management systems.Coherence provides a peer to peer (i.e., with no central manager),in-memory, distributed cache.

FIG. 12 illustrates an example of a distributed data grid 1200 whichstores data and provides data access to clients 1250 and implementsembodiments of the invention. A “data grid cluster”, or “distributeddata grid”, is a system comprising a plurality of computer servers(e.g., 1220 a, 1220 b, 1220 c, and 1220 d) which work together in one ormore clusters (e.g., 1200 a, 1200 b, 1200 c) to store and manageinformation and related operations, such as computations, within adistributed or clustered environment. While distributed data grid 1200is illustrated as comprising four servers 1220 a, 1220 b, 1220 c, 1220d, with five data nodes 1230 a, 1230 b, 1230 c, 1230 d, and 1230 e in acluster 1200 a, the distributed data grid 1200 may comprise any numberof clusters and any number of servers and/or nodes in each cluster. Inan embodiment, distributed data grid 1200 implements the presentinvention.

As illustrated in FIG. 12, a distributed data grid provides data storageand management capabilities by distributing data over a number ofservers (e.g., 1220 a, 1220 b, 1220 c, and 1220 d) working together.Each server of the data grid cluster may be a conventional computersystem such as, for example, a “commodity x86” server hardware platformwith one to two processor sockets and two to four CPU cores perprocessor socket. Each server (e.g., 1220 a, 1220 b, 1220 c, and 1220 d)is configured with one or more CPUs, Network Interface Cards (“NIC”),and memory including, for example, a minimum of 4 GB of RAM up to 64 GBof RAM or more. Server 1220 a is illustrated as having CPU 1222 a,Memory 1224 a, and NIC 1226 a (these elements are also present but notshown in the other Servers 1220 b, 1220 c, 1220 d). Optionally, eachserver may also be provided with flash memory (e.g., SSD 1228 a) toprovide spillover storage capacity. When provided, the SSD capacity ispreferably ten times the size of the RAM. The servers (e.g., 1220 a,1220 b, 1220 c, 1220 d) in a data grid cluster 1200 a are connectedusing high bandwidth NICs (e.g., PCI-X or PCIe) to a high-performancenetwork switch 1220 (for example, gigabit Ethernet or better).

A cluster 1200 a preferably contains a minimum of four physical serversto avoid the possibility of data loss during a failure, but a typicalinstallation has many more servers. Failover and failback are moreefficient the more servers that are present in each cluster and theimpact of a server failure on a cluster is lessened. To minimizecommunication time between servers, each data grid cluster is ideallyconfined to a single switch 1202 which provides single hop communicationbetween servers. A cluster may thus be limited by the number of ports onthe switch 1202. A typical cluster will therefore include between 4 and96 physical servers.

In most Wide Area Network (“WAN”) configurations of a distributed datagrid 1200, each data center in the WAN has independent, butinterconnected, data grid clusters (e.g., 1200 a, 1200 b, and 1200 c). AWAN may, for example, include many more clusters than shown in FIG. 12.Additionally, by using interconnected but independent clusters (e.g.,1200 a, 1200 b, 1200 c) and/or locating interconnected, but independent,clusters in data centers that are remote from one another, thedistributed data grid can secure data and service to clients 1250against simultaneous loss of all servers in one cluster caused by anatural disaster, fire, flooding, extended power loss, and the like.

One or more nodes (e.g., 1230 a, 1230 b, 1230 c, 1230 d and 1230 e)operate on each server (e.g., 1220 a, 1220 b, 1220 c, 1220 d) of acluster 1200 a. In a distributed data grid, the nodes may be, forexample, software applications, virtual machines, or the like, and theservers may comprise an operating system, hypervisor, or the like (notshown) on which the node operates. In an Oracle Coherence data grid,each node is a Java virtual machine (“JVM”). A number of JVMs/nodes maybe provided on each server depending on the CPU processing power andmemory available on the server. JVMs/nodes may be added, started,stopped, and deleted as required by the distributed data grid. JVMs thatrun Oracle Coherence automatically join and cluster when started.JVMs/nodes that join a cluster are called cluster members or clusternodes.

Each client or server includes a bus or other communication mechanismfor communicating information, and a processor coupled to bus forprocessing information. The processor may be any type of general orspecific purpose processor. Each client or server may further include amemory for storing information and instructions to be executed byprocessor. The memory can be comprised of any combination of randomaccess memory (“RAM”), read only memory (“ROM”), static storage such asa magnetic or optical disk, or any other type of computer readablemedia. Each client or server may further include a communication device,such as a network interface card, to provide access to a network.Therefore, a user may interface with each client or server directly, orremotely through a network, or any other method.

Computer readable media may be any available media that can be accessedby processor and includes both volatile and non-volatile media,removable and non-removable media, and communication media.Communication media may include computer readable instructions, datastructures, program modules, or other data in a modulated data signalsuch as a carrier wave or other transport mechanism, and includes anyinformation delivery media.

The processor may further be coupled via bus to a display, such as aLiquid Crystal Display (“LCD”). A keyboard and a cursor control device,such as a computer mouse, may be further coupled to bus to enable a userto interface with each client or server.

In one embodiment, the memory stores software modules that providefunctionality when executed by the processor. The modules include anoperating system that provides operating system functionality eachclient or server. The modules may further include a cloud identitymanagement module for providing cloud identity management functionality,and all other functionality disclosed herein.

The clients may access a web service such as a cloud service. The webservice may be implemented on a WebLogic Server from Oracle Corp. in oneembodiment. In other embodiments, other implementations of a web servicecan be used. The web service accesses a database which stores clouddata.

Authorization Model

One embodiment provides fine-grained authorization policies forprotecting the IDCS service resources described herein that are based onrole-based access control (“RBAC”) and attribute-based access control(“ABAC”). These fine-grained authorization policies provide not only theauthorization constructs for controlling access to IDCS resources foradministrative operations through IDCS REST APIs, but also provide theconstructs for achieving delegated administration, such as by creatingdifferent classes of administrators with varying degree of privileges tomanage resources. Embodiments use elements of the “eXtensible AccessControl Markup Language (”XACML″) resource-authorization model fordefining IDCS authorization.

The general concept of scopes is defined in “OAuth”, which is an openstandard for authorization that is commonly used as a way for Internetusers to log in to third party websites without exposing their password.Generally, OAuth provides to clients a “secure delegated access” toserver resources on behalf of a resource owner. It specifies a processfor resource owners to authorize third-party access to their serverresources without sharing their credentials. Designed specifically towork with HTTP, OAuth essentially allows access tokens to be issued tothird-party clients by an authorization server, with the approval of theresource owner. The third party then uses the access token to access theprotected resources hosted by the resource server. Embodiments implementOAuth to grant roles to scopes to segregate and delegate privilegesthroughout the system.

Scopes in OAuth are opaque and defined by the resource-server. Theauthorization and token endpoints allow the client to specify the scopeof the access request using the “scope” request parameter. In turn, theauthorization server uses the “scope” response parameter to inform theclient of the scope of the access token issued. In IDCS, the scoperepresents a collection of resource-actions, or a heterogeneouscollection of endpoints (privileges from a business sense) groupedtogether with a general theme of granting such privileges to a persona.Thus, embodiments implement a role based authorization model where rolesare granted to one or more scopes. The persona is granted the role.Thus, the persona gains access to a collection of resources. Further,attributes may be governed by a policy to enforce or implement ABAC.

Policy Enforcement occurs at two places in embodiments—

-   (1) During the token issuance, the allowed scopes are computed based    upon the user and client/application privileges. This is referred to    as a “static” or functional policy evaluation.-   (2) Subsequently, during the actual resource access, there may be a    further dynamic policy evaluation performed depending upon    additional data available at the time of the resource access. This    is referred to as “dynamic” or data security access. This is also    controlled by the IDCS authorization engine (e.g., web server 702 of    FIG. 7), and the policy framework provides support for this.

IDCS Resources are exposed as service endpoints and invoked via RESTAPIs. Embodiments protect endpoints from any entity that accesses theIDCS functionality through HTTP. Embodiments provide coarse-grainedauthorization for securing access to the endpoints. Embodiments furtherinclude fine-grained authorization for securing access to an endpointbased upon additional parameters, such as a user's group membership orpayload contents (i.e., business logic validation).

Embodiments bind users to groups and give users privileges. Withembodiments, different persona are expressed as application roles, andprivileges are assigned to application roles. Users are grantedapplication roles. Privileges are represented as scopes in oneembodiment, which is a collection of permitted endpoint operationshaving common semantics. Scopes are interpreted by an authorizationserver and embedded in access tokens that are used to access resourceservers. Therefore, roles are granted scopes.

Embodiments provide integration with a OAuth service. Aclient/application is an application that consumes business servicesoffered by a resource server or that offers any services. A client mayalso be granted privileges by effectively granting application roles.The resulting privileges are an intersection of the client's privilegesand the user's privileges (if present) and result in a user getting anaccess token. In addition to performing an intersection, otherembodiments can also construct a user Access Token with only the user'sprivileges. This is controlled by a property of the OAuth Clientreferred to as “onBehalfOfUser.”

The known OAuth service are not a general authorization server forresource servers because it does not provide policy management servicesrequired to understand authorization intricacies of heterogeneousresource servers. During token issuance, the privileges as scopes isreturned to the OAuth service.

For example, if the application is a financial services application,users may log onto a portal and then perform activities such as stocktrading. The portal UI is an application itself and can be givenprivileges as a client. Applications can be defined with very limitedprivileges. Therefore, one user that is a frequent trader may see morebuttons or options than another user with less privileges for the sameapplication based on the users' privileges.

In contrast to the known OAuth service, embodiments allow a OAuth Clientto request access tokens to access resources on behalf of the resourceowner or itself. In embodiments, when a user requests an access token,the user can make the request using two different methods, either byasking for specific scopes, or just asking for whatever they areentitled to if the scopes are not known to the user. Therefore, theclient includes the desired request scopes, or specifies“urn:opc:idm:_myscopes_” if it does not know what it can do, or justprefers to obtain all the grantable privileges, in the access tokenrequest. When embodiments see a request for an IDCS scope (starts withurn:opc:idm—), it will invoke the IDCS Authorization service providerinterface (“AZ SPI”) to compute the allowed scopes. Examples of scopes,each of which govern certain endpoints and actions, include:

-   -   urn:opc:idm:g.tenants    -   urn:opc:idm:t.grantcrosstenant    -   urn:opc:idm:t.settings    -   urn:opc:idm:t.security_r    -   urn:opc:idm:x.servicemanager    -   urn:opc:idm:t.security.client    -   urn:opc:idm:g.all    -   urn:opc:idm:g.config    -   urn:opc:idm:g.apptemplate    -   urn:opc:idm:g.schemas    -   urn:opc:idm:x.crosstenant    -   urn:opc:idm:t.user.me

FIG. 13 illustrates a call flow of OAuth token issuance flow inaccordance with one embodiment. At 1301, a client (i.e., application)1320 (e.g., application client 708 of FIG. 7) calls the OAuth service1340 (e.g., resource server 720 of FIG. 7) with a POST/token requestthat corresponds to a resource where access is desired. The request mayinclude user information and application information, the userinformation including a role of the user and the application informationincluding a role of the application. At 1302, OAuth service 1340validates the client by issuing a user/client combination asking for allof the allowed scopes from the Authorization module (i.e., a policyenforcement point (“PEP”) API 1360 such as Cloud Gate 702 of FIG. 7). At1304, the response is the allowed scopes, which is computed and which isincorporated in the access token and sent back to client 1320 at 1305.PEP API 1360 can evaluate the request by computing scopes for the accesstoken by determining an intersection between the user information andthe application information. Embodiments implement an inventive methodto compute the allowed scopes that are to be granted (at 1303) in FIG.13. The access token includes the computed scopes, which may be based atleast on the role of the user and the role of the application.

In conjunction with the allowed scopes, custom claims/statements canalso be returned at 1304. Custom claims provide different informationthat can be used by the server for authorization. For example the customclaim “user_isAdmin” is used to identify the user administrator for anapplication. This claim is inserted specifically during the OAuth AccessToken Claim to help improve the performance of the decide call.

The following is an example of a Access Token (“AT”) for a client inaccordance with one embodiment:

{ ″sub″: ″uiSignin″, ″user.tenant.name″: ″idcs-oracle″,″sub_mappingattr″: ″userName″, ″iss″: ″issuer-url″, ″tok_type″: ″AT″,″client_id″: ″uiSignin″, ″user_isAdmin″: true, ″aud″: [″“<audience-url>″, ″https://idcs-oracle.idcs.internal.oracle.com:8943″,], ″clientAppRoles″: [ ″Authenticated Client″, ″Signin″, ″Cross Tenant″], ″scope″: ″urn:opc:idm:t.security.client urn:opc:idm:t.user.signinurn:opc:idm:x.crosstenant″, ″client_tenantname″: ″idcs-oracle″, ″exp″:1484798238, ″iat″: 1484794638, ″client_name″: ″uiSignin″, ″tenant″:″idcs-oracle″, ″jti″: ″e9dcf280-5a13-4eca-a6e4-896745f6ad0f″ }

The following is an example of a Access Token for a user and a client inaccordance with one embodiment:

{ ″user_tz″: ″America/Chicago″, ″sub″: ″admin@oracle.com″,″user_locale″: ″en″, ″user_displayname″: ″admin opc″,″user.tenant.name″: ″acme″, ″csr″: ″false″, ″sub_mappingattr″:″userName″, ″iss″: ″<issuer url>″, ″tok_type″: ″AT″, ″user_tenantname″:″acme″, ″client_id″: ″testDomainAdmin″, ″user_isAdmin″: true, ″aud″: [″<audience url>”″, ″urn:opc:lbaas:logicalguid=acme″ ], ″user_id″:″78e2356a267742e19c0985c96f82b369″, ″clientAppRoles″: [ ″Global Viewer″,″Authenticated Client″, ″Identity Domain Administrator″, ″Me″ ],″scope″: ″urn:opc:idm:t.oauth urn:opc:idm:t.groups.membersurn:opc:idm:t.app urn:opc:idm:t.groups urn:opc:idm:t.krb.adminurn:opc:idm:t.namedappadmin urn:opc:idm:t.security.clienturn:opc:idm:t.user.authenticate urn:opc:idm:t.grantsurn:opc:idm:t.images urn:opc:idm:t.bulk urn:opc:idm:t.bulk.userurn:opc:idm:t.job.search urn:opc:idm:t.diagnostics_rurn:opc:idm:t.idbridge urn:opc:idm:t.idbridge.user urn:opc:idm:t.user.meurn:opc:idm:g.all_r urn:opc:idm:t.user.security urn:opc:idm:t.settingsurn:opc:idm:t.audit_r urn:opc:idm:t.job.app urn:opc:idm:t.oauthconsentsurn:opc:idm:t.policy urn:opc:idm:g.sharedfilesurn:opc:idm:t.res.importexport urn:opc:idm:t.users urn:opc:idm:t.reportsurn:opc:idm:t.job.identity urn:opc:idm:t.saml″, ″client_tenantname″:″acme″, ″user_lang″: ″en″, ″userAppRoles″: [ ″Authenticated″, ″GlobalViewer″, ″Identity Domain Administrator″ ], ″exp″: 1481806217, ″iat″:1481802617, ″client_name″: ″AdminConsoleApp″, ″tenant″: ″acme″, ″jti″:″6baa5414-57be-43d5-ae5b-70086424152b″ }

The above user and client token includes examples of a few customclaims, including:

-   (1) client_tenantname—references the tenancy in which the client Is    defined;-   (2) clientAppRoles—a multi-value attribute that lists all the    administration roles granted to the client.

FIG. 14 illustrates a call flow of a REST function securityauthorization sequence in accordance with one embodiment which occursafter the functionality of FIG. 13. At 1401, a REST request (or “accessauthorization request”) is made by client 1320 through a microservice.For example, the request may be to create a new user. The payload willhave information about the user and the request is directed towards theuser endpoint. Within a container 1402, a security filter 1420intercepts the request at 1403. In one embodiment, security filter 1420is implemented as a Java class that resides in each microservice thathosts endpoints. Therefore, filter 1420 may reside in the microservicesof SAML, Storage, Admin, Report, Job Services. Essentially, all themicroservices except the OAuth Service, as the OAuth Service hostsendpoints that require an unauthenticated user access.

At 1404, the access token is extracted and converted into an internalrepresentation that pools the user with the client (e.g., by determiningan intersection) and determines roles that the user and client has as aruntime construct. Subject security context 1405 creates the subject. ASubject security context is a construct available to a request Filter toconstruct a subject. A subject is a runtime internal construct thatrepresents the authenticated identity. The identity is a combination ofthe client and the user (if present). In the following example of aSubject, the user, and the attributes of the user are listed, along withthe client, and attributes of the client. Further, user or clientspecific custom claims are represented:

“subject”:{  “principal-type”:“PrincipalClientUser”,  “user”:{  “id”:“336903aa20384557885be93c4eb3b2f9”,  “loginID”:“admin@oracle.com”,   “display name”:“admin opc”,  “tenancy”:“acme”,   “additional-attributes”:{    “isCSR”:“false”   },  “application roles”:[    “Authenticated”,    “Global Viewer”,   “Identity Domain Administrator”   ]  },  “client”:{  “id”:“testDomainAdmin”,   “loginID”:“testDomainAdmin”,   “displayname”:“testDomainAdmin”,   “tenancy”:“acme”,   “application roles”:[   “Authenticated Client”,    “Identity Domain Administrator”,    “Me”  ]  },  “other-claims”:{   “onBehalfOfUser”:“false”,  “useExternalURLasBase”:“false”  } },

Container 1402 corresponds to the IDCS microservices of FIG. 6. Thetoken issuance logic (login ceremony) is called from the OAuth2microservice. The decide logic is called from the Job, Reports, Adminmicroservice (i.e., where the access token is redeemed, not shown inFIG. 6). The functionality of FIG. 14 also corresponds to IDCSInfrastructure Services Tier 916 of FIG. 9.

At 1406, at IDCS REST Resource 1425, which is a layer in themicroservice, the “decide” API is called by parsing the request, todetermine allowed scopes from PEP API 1360 (i.e., IDCS authorizationengine) using arguments including subject (“s”), resource type (“RT”),resource (“R”) and action (“A”) (i.e., what operation (A) is theclient+user (S) invoking upon the endpoint (RT)), the payload of therequest, an environment map (which includes the payload along with othervariables) with data for decide( ) API computation and an ObligationMap. The evaluating if access to the resource to perform an operation ispermitted can be based on the computed scopes, the resource, and theoperation. The evaluating can be further based on a payload of theaccess authorization request or indirect attributes of the resource.

An environment map is a Map containing additional key-value pairs thatare relevant for the authorization decision, but the key-value pairs donot represent a Subject, Resource-Type or an Action attribute. Anexample would be: “if the ResourceType access is a global or aper-tenant specific resource Type (therefore, key would be ‘isGlobal;value would be true/false”.

An Obligation Map is a construct to return Obligations from theauthorization decision engine. The Obligations help enrich the decision.An obligation must be acted upon by the PEP (policy enforcement point)and conveys to the caller. An obligation is defined in XACML.

At 1407, the allowed scopes from PEP API 1360 is used in conjunctionwith S, RT, A to determine if access is denied or allowed and then thisdetermination is returned at 1408 to the IDCS REST resource server. If adenial, an exception is sent to container 1402 that indicates thataccess of the endpoint is denied.

Sometimes a request is authorized based on what is being invoked, suchby looking at what the user is trying to do (i.e., the Action). Forexample, a user can be an administrator of a certain application. Thatinformation may not be apparent from parameters being passed, but canonly be deduced by the fact that the user is trying to access aparticular endpoint. There may be access if the user is a tenantadministrator or an administrator for the application. The request mayresult in a group query, called a “condition”, that must be run just intime (“JIT”). Embodiments look at the payload to determine whether auser can perform the operation. PEP API 1360 can return a yes or no withobligations. For example, a user may be able to query some reports butnot others. The response is returned to container 1402 at 1410.

Although known OAuth systems utilize scopes, embodiments provide aninventive functionality on how the allowed scopes are computed andsubsequently used. Embodiments of an authorization service first computethe allowed scopes [login_ceremony phase] and then during the tokenredemption, the allowed scopes are used along with the S, RT, A and anyother dynamic attributes to determine access. One embodiment of theauthorization engine is based upon RBAC+ABAC standards.

FIG. 15 is a block diagram of the authorization model architecture inaccordance with one embodiment. The functionality of 1-3 is disclosed indetail as the OAuth login phase to request an access token as shown inFIG. 13. The functionality of 4-6 correspond to the authorizationsequence as shown in FIG. 14. An EP enforcement point 1501 is part of anOracle Traffic Director (“OTD”) 1502 to determine whether the accesstoken has expired or is valid (not shown in FIG. 14). An OTD is asoftware load balancer for load balancing IDCS traffic. It distributesIDCS traffic across a number of servers and is used to increase capacityand reliability of applications.

Security filter 1503 corresponds to security filter 1420 in FIG. 14.Resource manager 1504 corresponds to IDCS REST Resource 1425 in FIG. 14.Authorization Service Manager 1505 corresponds to PEP API 1360 of FIG.14. Authorization Service Manager 1505 is involved in the functionalityof both FIGS. 13 and 14. A JSON policy file 1508 is included within thedata repository tier. JSON policy file 1508 includes one set of policiesfor all of the tenants in one embodiment. Therefore, in this embodimentthere is one set of static policies to govern all of the tenants.

In one embodiment, various application roles have been defined torepresent various persona. Notable attributes of these roles areGlobal/Tenant specific and Available/Grantable to User/Group/Client.Examples of a few roles and their purposes include:

-   -   Identity Domain Administrator—Tenant scoped role to manage all        tenant owned artifacts at the tenant level.    -   Audit Administrator—Tenant Scoped role to manage the audit        related dashboard and reports.    -   Change Password—Per Tenant and Oracle tenant scoped client        grantable role to facilitate a user to change his/her password.    -   IDCS All—for the Oracle Tenancy (i.e., the owner/operator of the        IDCS system). Meant for the IDCS infrastructure code only.        Cannot be granted to a user or a client, internal use only.

Embodiments provide a novel mapping of the scope to the role, as well asdetermining how privileges are assigned and allocated. Embodiments ingeneral include two phases: token issuance, shown for example in FIG.13, and granting actual resource access, shown for example in FIG. 14.

FIG. 16 illustrates functionality for computing applicable scopes fromuser and client/application roles in accordance with one embodiment. Thefunctionality of FIG. 16 corresponds to the functionality at 1303 ofFIG. 13, and uses the intersection of scopes and roles (if applicable)and in one embodiment also determines dynamic roles and scopes (ifapplicable). FIG. 16 illustrates how the requested scope from the OAuthAccess Token Request is handled by OAuth/Authorization Engine, and theallowed scope are computed. In one embodiment, all the permission setnames defined as part of policies exactly match with the allowed valuesof requested scopes. The input to the functionality of FIG. 16 areprincipal(s) and requested scope. The principal refers to the identityof the Client and the User during OAuthTokenReuest flow. It providesinformation about the client/user such as Name, Tenancy, App roles theypossess, etc. The output is the allowed scope.

The principals in FIG. 16 are the Client's Application Roles and theUser's (if present) Application Role. As in the following example, fromthe AT, the input to this API takes the roles, which is feedback intothe AT:

“user”:{   “  “app-roles”:[   “Authenticated”,   “Global Viewer”,  “Identity Domain Administrator”  ] }, “client”:{  “app-roles”:[  “Authenticated Client”,   “Identity Domain Administrator”,   “Me”  ]},

The scopes in FIG. 16 are the privileges being requested by the caller.The scope could be a specific set of privileges request such as“urn:opc:idm:t.bulk urn:opc:idm:t.bulk.user urn:opc:idm:t.ca.admin”(this is an example), or it could be “urn:opc:idm:_myscopes_” whichinforms the authorization server to simply return all the privilegesgranted to the caller.

At 1602, a dynamic role-scope claim is computed if applicable. Furtherdetails of 1602 are disclosed in conjunction with FIG. 16A.

The functionality continues, or begins, at 1604 if a user access tokenis to be computed with both the user's and the client's privileges(i.e., if “onBehalfOfUser” is false). First, the client applicable scopeis computed. If the user is present, at 1608 the user applicable scopeis computed (additional details disclosed in conjunction with FIG. 16B).Otherwise, at 1610 the user is not present.

At 1616, the final allowed scope is computed as the intersection of theclient scope and the user scope. Otherwise, at 1618 the final allowedscope is the client scope.

At 1616, certain scopes are tagged as “readonly”. The readonly tagconveys the actions that is permissible on the resources present in thescope and essentially conveys that a simple read or a query kind ofoperation is permitted. Thus, the underlying resource represented by theendpoint is not modifiable. Examples of such scopes are:

-   “urn:opc:idm:t.audit_r”-   “urn:opc:idm:t.diagnostics_r”,

The corresponding non read-only scopes (i.e. without the _r suffix),govern the same set of endpoints as the _r scope, however, allpermissible actions on the endpoints are part of the scope. Such a scopeis referred to as a “full scope.” Therefore, if one were granted“urn:opc:idm:t.audit”, then, implicitly, he/she would be granted“urn:opc:idm:t.audit_r”, since the read-only action is a subset of allthe permissible actions of a given endpoint. Therefore, while performingan intersection of the user's scope and the client's scope, care istaken to ensure that if the client is granted full scope, and the useris granted the read-only scope, the intersection should yield theread-only scope. Correspondingly, if the user is granted the full scope,and the client is granted the read-only scope, the intersection yieldsthe read-only scope. This is illustrated in the following example:

if at 1616, the computed values of the user-scope and client-scope are:

user-scopes “scope”:[   “urn:opc:idm:g.all_r”,  “urn:opc:idm:g.sharedfiles”,   “urn:opc:idm:t.audit”,  “urn:opc:idm:t.diagnostics_r”   “urn:opc:idm:t.grants”, ] --clientscopes

The functionality continues, or begins, at 1606 if a user access tokenis to be computed with only the user's privilege (i.e., if“onBehalfOfUser” is true). If the user is absent, the final scope is theclient scope at 1612. If the user is present, the user applicable scopeis computed at 1614 (additional details disclosed in conjunction withFIG. 16B). The final allowed scope is the user scope at 1620.

FIG. 16A illustrates functionality for computing a dynamic role-scope(i.e., a combination of dynamic roles and dynamic scopes) token claim inaccordance with one embodiment. In general, for an embodiment using thedynamic role functionality of FIG. 16A (as opposed to static roles),conditions are evaluated at runtime, and a role policy is used todetermine if privileges should be assigned for the IDCS-Oracle tenancyor for one of the other tenancies. Multiple copies of policies are notrequired to be stored. Instead, the dynamic role policies are encoded inthe access token.

At 1640, for each principal (used as a key in a map cache), the dynamicrole policy names are retrieved (using the map cache shown in FIG. 23below in one embodiment). At 1642, for each policy name, the definitionis retrieved (using the cache shown in FIG. 22 below in one embodiment).At 1644, the potential scope (“PermSetNames”) is retrieved by policyname. At 1646, a tuple claim is recorded as a token.

FIG. 16B illustrates functionality for computing a client or userapplicable scope in accordance to an embodiment. At 1660, the inheritedapplication role is updated (disclosed in more detail in FIG. 16Cbelow). At 1662, for each application role, all allowed policies areretrieved. At 1664, each retrieved policy is evaluated (additionaldetails are disclosed in conjunction with FIG. 17 below). At 1666, ifthe policy is applicable, the corresponding scope is added to theapplicable scope.

FIG. 16C illustrates functionality for determining inherited applicationroles in accordance with one embodiment.

FIG. 16D illustrates functionality for computing a dynamic role-scopetoken claim in accordance with another embodiment.

FIG. 17 illustrates functionality for policy evaluation in accordancewith one embodiment. At 1702, the functionality begins by fetching thepolicy definition (using the cache shown in FIG. 21 below in oneembodiment). At 1704, if a condition is not present, the policy scope isadded to the applicable scope and an “alsoTenants” claim is computed(further details disclosed in FIG. 17A below). At 1706, if a conditionis present, the condition is evaluated. At 1708, if the conditionevaluation is true, the policy scope is added to the applicable scopeand an “alsoTenants” claim is computed (further details disclosed inFIG. 17A below). At 1710, if the condition evaluation is false,functionality ends. At 1712, if an error occurs, the allowed scopecomputation is failed.

Policy Evaluation is the process of determining whether an authorizationpolicy effect (i.e., GRANT/DENY) is applicable. This might involve theevaluation of a condition which is a custom Java code. The Authorizationpolicy may or may not be associated with a condition that requiresruntime evaluation. The evaluating may be based on an XACML basedauthorization policy. The condition class execution at runtime returns aBoolean value indicating whether the condition is applicable or not. Ifthe Boolean is true, the condition is applicable and hence the policyeffect (GRANT/DENY) holds. If the Boolean is false, the condition is notapplicable and hence the policy effect (GRANT/DENY) is also notapplicable. Further, during AccessTokenlssuance flow since there is onlyan interest in the applicable scopes, only the grant policies areprocessed. The denied policies are evaluated in decide flow because thecomplete set of information to evaluate policies (deny and allow) isavailable only during the decide flow in one embodiment.

FIG. 17A illustrates functionality for computing alsoTenants claim inaccordance with one embodiment.

FIGS. 18 and 18A-C illustrate functionality for REST functionauthorization/decide( ) API flow in accordance with one embodiment. FIG.18 checks for resource tenancy access in accordance with one embodiment.FIG. 18A is a resource tenancy truth table in accordance with oneembodiment.

The functionality of FIG. 18B is for finding applicable dynamic rolepolicies which is used in authorization decision logic implemented todetermine if access to the requested endpoint is permitted or not inaccordance with one embodiment. At 1802, if the dynamic role and scopeclaim (“allowedDynScopes” or “role-scope”) is present in the accesstoken (“AT”), all role policies are evaluated first. Otherwise, if thedynamic role and scope claim is not present, functionality at 1806 movesto grant/deny policy segregation as disclosed in conjunction with FIG.20 below.

At 1804, for each role, the corresponding role policy is located (usingthe cache shown in FIG. 28 below in one embodiment). At 1808, the rolepolicy is evaluated, as disclosed in conjunction with FIG. 20 below. At1810, if applicable, the dynamic applicable scope from the AT is addedto the allowed scope. At 1812 functionality moves to grant/deny policysegregation as disclosed in conjunction with FIG. 18C below.

FIG. 18C illustrates functionality for grant/deny policy segregation inaccordance with one embodiment. The runtime cache is designed foroptimal performance. Therefore, in this case, the policies aresegregated into GRANT and DENY policies to ensure the DENY are evaluatedfirst, as the DENY policies take precedence over the ALLOW policies.Various other caches are also implemented in runtime which are describedbelow. If any single policy denies the access to a resource, then theaccess must be denied.

At 1820, using “ResTypeName”, all granted and denied policies are found(using the cache shown in FIG. 27 below in one embodiment). At 1822, alldenied policies are processed, as disclosed in detail in conjunctionwith FIG. 19 below. A DENY of an access to a resource always takesprecedence over grant in one embodiment. Therefore, even if one policyevaluates to DENY the access, the processing should immediately stop.Therefore, the functionality of FIG. 18C as well as the wholeisAccessAllowed flow ends. At 1824, if applicable, all deny +obligations are returned. At 1826, all grant policies are processed, asdisclosed in detail in conjunction with FIG. 19 below. At 1828, ifapplicable, all allow + obligations are returned. Otherwise, at 1830,the return is not applicable.

FIG. 19 illustrates functionality for finding all applicable policies inaccordance with one embodiment. The functionality of FIG. 19 determinesthe policies to be evaluated in FIG. 20. FIG. 19 corresponds to thedetermination of applicable policies for evaluation during the RESTFunction Authorization flow. Based on the policy names the applicablescopes/permission sets are determined by a cache look up frompolicyDefinitionCache shown in FIG. 21 below (at 1902). Then thesescopes are intersected with the allowed scopes from Access Token todetermine the scopes/permission sets for evaluation (at 1904). Next,embodiments perform ResourceType, Resource, Action matching of the abovescopes with the incoming request ResourceType, Resource and Action (at1906). Next, embodiments look up the policies for the matched scopes (at1908, 1910) (using the cache shown in FIGS. 26 and 29 below in oneembodiment) as well as performing subject matching and get subjectmatched policies. Embodiments then find intersection of subject matchedand resource matched policies for policy evaluation (at 1912). Finally,the policies are evaluated (at 1914), shown on more detail in FIG. 20below.

FIG. 20 illustrates functionality for evaluating each applicable policyin accordance with one embodiment. At 2002, the functionality begins andthe condition is evaluated. If the condition returns false, at 2006 thepolicy is treated as not applicable, or if there is an error at 2008,functionality ends. If the condition returns true at 2004, static ordynamic obligations of the policy are computed at 2010. At 2012, thepolicy effect is returned. At 2014, if deny, further processing isstopped and at 2018 all deny and obligations are returned. At 2016, ifallow, the processing of all policies is continued and at 2020 the allowdecision is returned along with obligations to the caller.

FIG. 21 illustrates a policy definition map cache in accordance to anembodiment.

FIG. 22 illustrates a role policy definition map cache in accordance toan embodiment.

FIG. 23 illustrates a principal to role policy names map cache inaccordance to an embodiment.

FIG. 24 illustrates an inherited application role map cache inaccordance to an embodiment.

FIG. 25 illustrates a permissionset definition map cache in accordanceto an embodiment.

FIG. 26 illustrates a principal to policy map cache in accordance to anembodiment.

FIG. 27 illustrates a resourcetype to policy name map cache inaccordance to an embodiment.

FIG. 28 illustrates a granted role to role policy name cache inaccordance to an embodiment.

FIG. 29 illustrates a permissionset to policy map cache in accordance toan embodiment.

FIG. 30 is a flow diagram of authorization functionality in accordancewith an embodiment. In one embodiment, the functionality of the flowdiagram of FIG. 30 is implemented by software stored in memory or othercomputer readable or tangible medium, and executed by a processor. Inother embodiments, the functionality may be performed by hardware (e.g.,through the use of an application specific integrated circuit (“ASIC”),a programmable gate array (“PGA”), a field programmable gate array(“FPGA”), etc.), or any combination of hardware and software.

At 3002, embodiments (e.g., OAuth Service 1340 of FIG. 13) receive anaccess token request for an access token that corresponds to theresource desired to be accessed by a user and/or an application (alsoreferred to as a “client”). In one embodiment, the request is receivedfrom the client. In one embodiment, the application is a OAuth client,and the resource is a OAuth resource server. The access token requestincludes user information, client/application information, and thedesired scopes of the request. The following is an example of an accesstoken request:

{  “request”:{   “tenant”:“acme”,   “grant types”:“password”,  “scopes”:[    “urn:opc:idm:_myscopes_”   ]  },  “user”:{  “id”:“336903aa20384557885be93c4eb3b2f9”,   “name”:“admin@oracle.com”,  “tenant”:“acme”,   “auth-type”:“PASSWORD”,   “app-roles”:[   “Authenticated”,    “Global Viewer”,    “Identity DomainAdministrator”   ]  },  “client”:{   “id”:“testDomainAdmin”,  “name”:“testDomainAdmin”,   “tenant”:“acme”,  “auth-type”:“ASSERTION”,   “app-roles”:[    “Authenticated Client”,   “Identity Domain Administrator”,    “Me”   ]  },  “environment”:{  “isCSR”:“false”,   “onBehalfOfUser”:“false”  } }

The user information includes roles of the user and may include theuser's tenant. The client information includes roles of the client.Example of roles granted only to a client/application include: ChangePassword, Reset Password, Verify Email, Sign in, Me and Cloud Gate.Example of roles granted to both clients and users include: IdentityDomain Administrator, Security Administrator, User Administrator andApplication Administrator. Each of the desired scope corresponds to acollection of one or more resource-actions (i.e., permitted actions onthe resource).

At 3004, embodiments evaluate the access token request bydetermining/computing permitted scopes for the access token bydetermining an intersection between the user information/roles and theclient information/roles. In one embodiment, the evaluation is performedby PEP API 1360 at 1303 as shown in FIG. 13. The computed allowed scopesare based at least on the roles of the user or the roles of the client.The roles can be based on a dynamic role policy that is included as aclaim in the access token as previously described.

At 3006, the access token with the computed scopes is provided to theclient (e.g., at 1305 of FIG. 13).

At 3008, embodiments evaluate (e.g., at 1407 of FIG. 14) if actualaccess to the resource is permitted based on the allowed scopes, theresource being accessed, and the operation to be performed. Theevaluation may also be based on additional attributes such as thepayload, or indirect attributes about the resource. An example of anadditional attribute is the below user creation payload. This usercreation payload is used at runtime for a user creation allow/denydecision:

{  “schemas”: [     “urn:ietf:params:scim:schemas:core:2.0:User”,    “urn:ietf:params:scim:schemas:extension:enterprise:2.0:User”,    “urn:ietf:params:scim:schemas:oracle:idcs:extension:user:User”    ],     “userName”: “john.doe@acme.com”,  “name”: {    “givenName”:“John”    },  “emails”: [     {     “value”: “john.doe@acme.com”,    “type”: “home”,     “primary”: true     }     ], “urn:ietf:params:scim:schemas:oracle:idcs:extension:user:User”: {   “isFederatedUser”: true,    “creationMechanism”:“adsync”   } }In this example, a user cannot be created with attributesisFederatedUser=true and creationMechanism=adsync. At runtime, thepayload is looked into for these attribute values

At 3010, embodiments return a decision (e.g., at 1410 of FIG. 14) onwhether access is permitted along with any obligations applicable withthe decision.

Regarding the obligations, an Obligation Map is a construct to returnObligations from the authorization decision engine. The Obligations helpenrich the decision. An obligation must be acted upon by the PEP (policyenforcement point) and conveys to the caller. An Obligation can be anygeneric object with an Obligation type in it. Consider a case when aUser Administrator is performing a SEARCH on the Jobs endpoint. Thoughthe User Administrator is allowed to SEARCH on /Jobs, they should not beable to view Jobs related to the Applications (and visible only to theApplication Administrator). Hence along with the “Allowed” decision fromthe Authorization engine, there is a need to pass the jobs the UserAdministrator is allowed to see. These are passed as obligations(additional information as part of decision). IDCS will append thisinformation as an SQL Filter predicate to limit what the filter returns.

The below example data is constructed into an Obligation object andpopulated into the obligation map. Therefore, the user can query UserXXXor GroupXXX related Jobs:

“obligations”: [   {   “id”: “jobType”,   “type”: “filter_predicate”,  “values”: [    “BulkUserPasswordMustChangeSet”,   “BulkUserPasswordReset”,    “GroupImport”,    “UserImport”,   “GroupExport”,    “UserExport”   ]   }  ]

In one embodiment, at 3004, the user's privileges alone can be used toevaluate the request, depending on the status of the “onBehalfOfUser”(i.e., if “onBehalfOfUser” is true). In this embodiment, scopedetermination is performed without the need of an intersection.

The onBehalfof allowed operation provides a way to ensure that accessprivileges can be generated from the user's privileges alone, so that aclient application can access endpoints to which the user has access,even if the client application by itself would not normally have access.

When an authorized client application implements functionality thatrequires it to access IDCS endpoints, that client is granted thenecessary privileges to do so. A web application client, on the otherhand, implements functionality that requires the client application toaccess endpoints using the privileges and scopes acquired from thelogged-in user. With a default authorization behavior in one embodiment,that client must still have the full set of privileges required toaccess those endpoints without regard to the privileges granted to theuser. The onBehalfof allowed operation provides an administrator a wayto indicate that the user's privileges alone should be used rather thanan intersection of the user's scopes (if a user is present) and theclient's scopes.

Public or command line interface (“CLI”) applications have very limitedprivileges or no privileges to access endpoints. These types of clientsrely on the user who is accessing the application to drive what rightsthe application has. When a user is accessing a public application, ifthe user was issued an access token that is constructed from the user'sprivileges alone, that user would be able to access the endpoints aslong as the user is authorized.

“onBehalfOf” enables the generation of such an access token for theOAuth Client application. When computing the IDCS-specific scopes(scopes that begin with “urn:opc:idm:”) to set in the access token, IDCSignores the client's privileges and uses a scope equal to or less thanthe scope originally granted to the authorized user. So, only the user'sprivileges (admin roles, groups, and so on) in conjunction with therequested scopes are used to determine access. If the requested scope“urn:opc:idm:_myscopes_” is used, then all scopes that are granted tothe user are returned.

As disclosed, embodiments provide a token that includes a scope used toreference resources that are protected. Once a user obtains a token, theuser has access to resources. A scope is a collection of resourcesprotected by the IDCS system. Embodiments define a scope to representone or more resources (i.e., resource+action). For example, if the useris an audit administrator, embodiments define a scope with resourcesmeaningful for an audit, and define different roles. Then, resources canbe grouped under that scope. Therefore, in embodiments, a scoperepresents a collection of resource actions.

Further, embodiments provide policy enforcement in two places andlevels, including coarse grain and fine grain. For example, assume theneed to enter a building with a security card. The card lets the userenter main building, but only to go to first floor (i.e., coarse grain).Where the user wants to go (i.e., specific office) is a fine graincheck.

Similarly, embodiments include a two-step process. For the first step,the user is provided a token (as illustrated in FIG. 13). When the userrequests a token, the user may not know what resources they want toaccess, but the user's role is known and, based on the known role,embodiments can determine access to certain scopes. An API (i.e., PEPAPI 1360 of FIG. 13) computes the scopes available to the user. For thesecond step, embodiments determine if the current user is allowed toperform the requested operation (as illustrated in FIG. 14). In general,the answer is based on the subject, resource and action. However,sometimes it is necessary to determine what is in the payload or querythe backend.

The backend is the data or user store. For example, there may be a needto modify a password of a user. However, if the user is not managed inIDCS, and is instead a user that is managed externally, the passwordcannot be modified. Therefore, during the actual authorization requestto determine if the password can be modified, a query Is performed tofetch the user information. If the user is managed by IDCS alone, thenthe authorization request is successful. Otherwise, the request isdenied.

Embodiments provide the ability to centralize the authorization point inthe authorization server itself. Embodiments centralize expressedpolicies in the authorization server and provide a single central pointfor administrating and managing policies that govern all end points.

Embodiments include a dynamic change ability (e.g., restrict activityduring weekends). The dynamic change ability is external to the policybut can affect the outcome of a policy decision. If a policy has acondition that restricts access to the endpoint during the weekends,then a decision result will change depending upon when the endpoint wasaccessed. Thus, the result is dynamic in nature. and not alwaysdepending upon the static information gleaned from the policy (subject,which endpoint and what operation was performed). The dynamicfunctionality is implemented as a condition. A condition is a customJava code meant to be executed while evaluating a policy for thespecific endpoint (during the policy evaluation). If the conditionreturns true, the policy returns the effect.

Dynamic Roles and Scopes

In one embodiment, there is a need to grant or deny a specific set ofprivileges to the user based upon dynamic factors, such as the time ofthe day or the tenancy being accessed. In general, with known role-basedaccess control (“RBAC”) implementations, privileges are typicallygranted or revoked by granting or revoking a corresponding role from theuser. The role serves as a way to ease the administrative operations.

However, in embodiments there is a need to alter the privileges grantedto a user depending upon the tenancy they are logging into. For example,certain users logging into the “IDCS-Oracle” tenancy, which is a tenancyfor the owner/operator of the IDCS system to provide access to allfacets of the system for overall administration and maintenanceoperations, may get privileges of the Identity Domain AdministratorRole. An IDCS-Oracle administrator would generally have no need toaccess individual customer/user tenants. For other tenants, such asindividual customers of the system, the same user will not get theprivileges of the Identity Domain Administrator Role as customers/usersof the IDCS system are prevented from accessing and/or modifying areasof the IDCS system outside of their individually assigned tenant.

One solution is to define authorization policies per tenant. In thissolution, there would be provision per tenant policies, or at leastprovision policies in those tenants that have identical policies. Forthe IDCS-Oracle tenant policy, embodiments of this solution wouldadditionally provision the policy where the user would be granted allthe privileges of the Identity Domain Administrator.

However, for the preceding solution, there are some disadvantages. Forone, multiple copies of the tenant specific policies need to be createdon persistent storage. Specifically, there needs to be at least twocopies in the persistent storage, one for the IDCS-Oracle tenancy andone for the other remaining tenancies. Further, multiple copies of thetenant specific policies must be available at runtime. Specifically,there needs to be at least two runtime copies, one for the IDCS-Oracletenancy and the other for the remaining tenancies that have the samepolicy definitions. For other embodiments where there are more than twodifferent types of tenants, requiring more than two different sets ofpolicies, even more copies of policies must be created on persistentstorage and be made available at runtime.

The general concept of dynamic roles is a known construct in RBAC andAttribute-based access control (“ABAC”) and other identity systems as amechanism to grant or revoke roles to a subject, and thereby controleffectively the privileges the subject receives. In other words, if auser is logged into a tenancy, that user will be granted a specific roleprovided that certain conditions have been met (i.e., dynamicallygranting a role). If the user is granted the role, the user inherits allprivileges associated with that role (i.e., dynamically grantingprivileges).

In embodiments, in contrast to known solutions, conditions are evaluatedat runtime (i.e., during policy evaluation such as shown in FIG. 17),and a role policy is used to determine if privileges should be assignedfor the IDCS-Oracle tenancy or for one of the other tenancies.Therefore, there is a single policy definition for all tenants. Multiplecopies of policies are not required to be stored. Instead, the dynamicrole and scope policies are encoded in the access token, as disclosedbelow. The access token, when returned, will include an additional claimto account for the dynamic role and scope policy.

As disclosed, embodiments implement two steps for requesting a token andthen for determining scopes based on the token. For the first step, theuser is provided a token (as illustrated in FIG. 13). When the userrequests a token, the user may not know what resources they want toaccess and/or which tenancy they want to access, but the user's role isknown and, based on the known role, embodiments can determine access tocertain scopes. An API (i.e., PEP API 1360 of FIG. 13) computes thescopes available to the user. For the second step, embodiments determineif the current user is allowed to perform the requested operation (asillustrated in FIG. 14) using the “decide” API. The principal refers tothe identity of the Client and the User during OAuthTokenRequest flow.

In general, dynamic role policy provides additional roles to a user thatthe user would not normally receive. The additional roles are granted ifa certain condition is met. Therefore, because of the policy, a userwill get the role dynamically as opposed to the typical grant from thesystem. The purpose of policy evaluation is to determine if theuser/client is allowed to access a certain endpoint and perform acertain operation.

Embodiments need only a single policy definition for all tenants. Thepolicy enforcement at runtime differs from static roles by virtue of theattributes participating in the role policy computation. In order toreduce performance overhead, in embodiments the dynamic roles andspecifically, the scopes that have to be evaluated if they are grantableor not in the target tenancy based upon the specific endpoint beingaccessed, is also encoded in the Access Token. The computation todetermine the dynamic roles and the scopes is an one time activityperformed during the getAllowedScopes call (i.e., the OAuth Ceremony tocompute the allowed Scopes as shown in FIG. 16) and then simply encodedinto the Access Token. The overhead is not incurred during each decidecall (i.e., decide call 1407 of FIG. 14).

Referring again to FIG. 16, embodiments compute the dynamic roles andscopes at 1602, and ultimately determine token claims based on thecomputed dynamic roles and scopes. The getAllowedScopes API to theauthorization engine of IDCS takes as input the client Principal, theuser Principal (which is optional and may be absent), dynamic attributes(e.g., requested-resource-tenancy-name) that may contribute to thepolicy evaluation and requested scopes.

The functionality of FIG. 16, which involves iterating over the adminroles in the client principal, includes the following:

-   -   1. If (dynamicAttribute::onBehalfOfUser=false)    -    For each admin role in the Client Principal        -   a. Compute the dynamic scopes that may be allowed (shown at            1602 and in FIG. 16A). At the end of this step, a tuple is            recorded (shown at 1646 of FIG. 16A) that includes the            dynamic role, and the associated scopes. There may be more            than 1 tuple recorded.        -   b. Compute the static allowed scopes (shown at 1608 and in            FIG. 16B).    -   2. If the user Principal is present,    -    For each admin role in the User Principal        -   a. Compute the dynamic roles and dynamic scopes that may be            allowed (shown in FIG. 16A).        -   b. Compute the static allowed scopes (shown at 1608 and in            FIG. 16B).        -   c. Aggregate the allowed scopes for the user.    -   3. Compute effective scopes:        -   a. For effective dynamic roles-scopes, it is the            intersection of the dynamic client roles & scopes (if            computed) and the dynamic user roles & scopes (if computed)            (shown in FIG. 16D).        -   b. For effective static scopes, it is the intersection of            the static client scopes (if computed) and the static user            scopes (if computed) (shown at 1616 or 1620 of FIG. 16).    -   4. Set the effective dynamic roles/scopes in the access token as        a specific claim.    -   5. Set the effective static scopes in the access token as        another specific claim, in the same token.

Referring again to FIG. 17, embodiments perform policy evaluation forthe dynamic roles and scopes determined in FIG. 16 in accordance to oneembodiment and as part of the getAllowedScopes API.

FIG. 31 provides an example of a portion of a JWT token that includesthe dynamic roles and scopes, as well as the static scopes, inaccordance to one embodiment. In contrast to tokens with only staticroles, a new token Oauth claim “allowedDynScopes” (at 3101) points tothe dynamic roles and corresponding scopes and is used to track thedynamic roles and scopes. The claim name “scopes” (at 3102) points tothe static scopes. The “allowedDynScopes” claim is consulted during the“decide( )/isAccessAllowed( ) phase” (“decide( )”) which determinesaccess to a resource based on the token, as shown in FIGS. 18-18C. Byincluding the “allowedDynScopes” claim in the token, performance gainsare achieved because it avoids the need to recomputed the dynamic scopesvalue each time during the decide( ) phase, as described in more detailbelow.

An example “allowedDynScopes” claim in the Access Token in oneembodiment is as follows:

 “allowedDynScopes”: [   {    “roleName”: “Identity DomainAdministrator”,    “scopes”: [    “urn:opc:idm:g.identitysourcetemplate_r”,     “urn:opc:idm:t.oauth”,    “urn:opc:idm:t.groups.members”,     “urn:opc:idm:t.app”,    “urn:opc:idm:t.groups”,     “urn:opc:idm:t.user.lockedstatechanger”,    “urn:opc:idm:t.job.importexport”,    “urn:opc:idm:t.idbridge.unmapped.idcsattributes”,    “urn:opc:idm:t.krb.admin”,     “urn:opc:idm:t.namedappadmin”,    “urn:opc:idm:t.selfregistrationprofile”,    “urn:opc:idm:t.user.authenticate”,     “urn:opc:idm:t.grants”,    “urn:opc:idm:t.security.client”,     “urn:opc:idm:t.authentication”,    “urn:opc:idm:t.container”,     “urn:opc:idm:t.images”,    “urn:opc:idm:t.bulk”,     “urn:opc:idm:g.apptemplate_r”,    “urn:opc:idm:t.bulk.user”,     “urn:opc:idm:t.job.search”,    “urn:opc:idm:t.diagnostics_r”,     “urn:opc:idm:t.idbridge”,    “urn:opc:idm:t.idb_containers”,     “urn:opc:idm:t.idbridge.user”,    “urn:opc:idm:t.user.me”,     “urn:opc:idm:g.all_r”,    “urn:opc:idm:t.user.security”,     “urn:opc:idm:t.settings”,    “urn:opc:idm:t.audit_r”,     “urn:opc:idm:t.job.app”,    “urn:opc:idm:t.idbridge.sourceevent”,     “urn:opc:idm:t.policy”,    “urn:opc:idm:g.sharedfiles”,     “urn:opc:idm:t.res.importexport”,    “urn:opc:idm:t.users”,     “urn:opc:idm:t.reports”,    “urn:opc:idm:t.job.identity”,     “urn:opc:idm:t.saml”,    “urn:opc:idm:t.mfa”,     “urn:opc:idm:t.mfa.useradmin” ]

FIGS. 18-18C illustrate the functionality of the decide( ) phase inaccordance to one embodiment. The functionality includes:

-   -   1. Fetch dynamic roles from the access token. The dynamic        role-scopes are stored as a tuple (pair) in the AT. Therefore,        when a dynamic role is fetched, also fetched is the        corresponding dynamic scopes associated with this role. (shown        at 1804 of FIG. 18B). Specifically, dynamic role-scope tuples        are part of “allowedDynScope” claim of access token.    -   2. If dynamic roles are present, determine if there are any        corresponding dynamic policies (shown at 1804 of FIG. 18B). An        example of a Dynamic Role Policy is as follows: Grant the user        Identity Domain Admin Role where condition is “if (user is from        CSR Tenancy and Resource Tenancy is oracle-idcs)”        -   a. If yes, evaluate the policy (shown in FIG. 20).            Typically, this involves evaluating a condition associated            with the policy.        -   b. If the policy is applicable, then the corresponding            dynamic scopes are added to the session's allowedScopes for            this request only (shown at 1810 of FIG. 18B). The            allowedScopes from the Access Token are also added to this            session's allowedScopes.        -   c. The policy evaluation now uses this new allowed scopes            (i.e., granted allowed scopes and granted dynamic roles (and            corresponding scopes)) in conjunction with the subject            (gleaned from the access token), the endpoint being            accessed, the operation being performed on the endpoint and            any additional dynamic attributes (shown in FIG. 18C).

Several embodiments are specifically illustrated and/or describedherein. However, it will be appreciated that modifications andvariations of the disclosed embodiments are covered by the aboveteachings and within the purview of the appended claims withoutdeparting from the spirit and intended scope of the invention.

What is claimed is:
 1. A method of authorizing access to a resourceassociated with a tenancy in an identity management system thatcomprises a plurality of tenancies, the method comprising: receiving atthe identity management system an access token request from a client foran access token that corresponds to the resource, wherein the requestcomprises user information and application information, the userinformation comprising roles of a user and the application informationcomprising roles of an application; determining dynamic roles for theuser and dynamic roles for the application; evaluating the access tokenrequest by computing static scopes for the access token comprisingdetermining a first intersection between the user information and theapplication information; evaluating the access token request bycomputing dynamic roles and corresponding dynamic scopes for the accesstoken comprising a second intersection between the dynamic roles of theuser and the dynamic roles of the application, the dynamic scopes basedat least on a first tenancy that corresponds to the user; generating andproviding the access token to the client, the generated access tokencomprising the computed static scopes as a first claim that is encodedin the access token, wherein the static scopes are based at least onroles of the user and the roles of the application, and furthercomprising the computed dynamic roles and corresponding dynamic scopesas a second claim that is different than the first claim and is encodedin the access token; after providing the access token to the client,determining, at the identity management system, access to a resource inresponse to receiving, from the client, the access token with an accessauthorization request, the determining access comprising: fetching thedynamic roles from the second claim of the access token; evaluating adynamic policy that corresponds to the dynamic roles, wherein theevaluating the dynamic policy comprises evaluating a conditionassociated with the dynamic policy; and based on the evaluating thedynamic policy, adding the dynamic scopes to the static scopes from thefirst claim of the access token to generate allowed scopes for theaccess authorization request.
 2. The method of claim 1, wherein theresource is protected from access based at least on a tenancy of anaccess requesting user or an access requesting application, and theaccess token request further comprises a corresponding tenant of theuser, and an indication of whether the user is an administrator for theapplication.
 3. The method of claim 2, wherein the access tokencomprises custom token claims indicating whether the user is theadministrator for the application.
 4. The method of claim 1, whereinwhen an OnBehalfOfUser property is true, the second intersection includethe dynamic roles of the application and the dynamic roles of the userwhen present.
 5. The method of claim 1, wherein providing the accesstoken comprises recording a tuple comprising the dynamic roles and thecorresponding dynamic scopes.
 6. The method of claim 1, wherein thedynamic scopes comprise OAuth scopes and the client comprises an OAuthclient and comprises the user or the application.
 7. The method of claim2, wherein the determining access to the resource is based on aneXtensible Access Control Markup Language (XACML) based authorizationpolicy.
 8. A non-transitory computer readable medium having instructionsstored thereon that, when executed by a processor, authorizes access toa resource associated with a tenancy in an identity management systemthat comprises a plurality of tenancies, the authorizes accesscomprising: receiving at the identity management system an access tokenrequest from a client for an access token that corresponds to theresource, wherein the request comprises user information and applicationinformation, the user information comprising roles of a user and theapplication information comprising roles of an application; determiningdynamic roles for the user and dynamic roles for the application;evaluating the access token request by computing static scopes for theaccess token comprising determining a first intersection between theuser information and the application information; evaluating the accesstoken request by computing dynamic roles and corresponding dynamicscopes for the access token comprising a second intersection between thedynamic roles of the user and the dynamic roles of the application, thedynamic scopes based at least on a first tenancy that corresponds to theuser; generating and providing the access token to the client, thegenerated access token comprising the computed static scopes as a firstclaim that is encoded in the access token, wherein the static scopes arebased at least on roles of the user and the roles of the application,and further comprising the computed dynamic roles and correspondingdynamic scopes as a second claim that is different than the first claimand is encoded in the access token; after providing the access token tothe client, determining, at the identity management system, access to aresource in response to receiving, from the client, the access tokenwith an access authorization request, the determining access comprising:fetching the dynamic roles from the second claim of the access token;evaluating a dynamic policy that corresponds to the dynamic roles,wherein the evaluating the dynamic policy comprises evaluating acondition associated with the dynamic policy; and based on theevaluating the dynamic policy, adding the dynamic scopes to the staticscopes from the first claim of the access token to generate allowedscopes for the access authorization request.
 9. The computer readablemedium of claim 8, wherein the resource is protected from access basedat least on a tenancy of an access requesting user or an accessrequesting application, and the access token request further comprises acorresponding tenant of the user, and an indication of whether the useris an administrator for the application.
 10. The computer readablemedium of claim 9, wherein the access token comprises custom tokenclaims indicating whether the user is the administrator for theapplication.
 11. The computer readable medium of claim 8, wherein whenan OnBehalfOfUser property is true, the second intersection include thedynamic roles of the application and the dynamic roles of the user whenpresent.
 12. The computer readable medium of claim 8, wherein providingthe access token comprises recording a tuple comprising the dynamicroles and the corresponding dynamic scopes.
 13. The computer readablemedium of claim 8, wherein the dynamic scopes comprise OAuth scopes andthe client comprises an OAuth client and comprises the user or theapplication.
 14. The computer readable medium of claim 9, wherein thedetermining access to the resource is based on an eXtensible AccessControl Markup Language (XACML) based authorization policy.
 15. A cloudbased system for authorizing access to a resource associated with atenancy in an identity management system that comprises a plurality oftenancies, the system comprising: one or more processors that executeinstructions to implements a microservice, a microservice functionalitycomprising: receiving at the identity management system an access tokenrequest from a client for an access token that corresponds to theresource, wherein the request comprises user information and applicationinformation, the user information comprising roles of a user and theapplication information comprising roles of an application; determiningdynamic roles for the user and dynamic roles for the application;evaluating the access token request by computing static scopes for theaccess token comprising determining a first intersection between theuser information and the application information; evaluating the accesstoken request by computing dynamic roles and corresponding dynamicscopes for the access token comprising a second intersection between thedynamic roles of the user and the dynamic roles of the application, thedynamic scopes based at least on a first tenancy that corresponds to theuser; generating and providing the access token to the client, thegenerated access token comprising the computed static scopes as a firstclaim that is encoded in the access token, wherein the static scopes arebased at least on roles of the user and the roles of the application,and further comprising the computed dynamic roles and correspondingdynamic scopes as a second claim that is different than the first claimand is encoded in the access token; after providing the access token tothe client, determining, at the identity management system, access to aresource in response to receiving, from the client, the access tokenwith an access authorization request, the determining access comprising:fetching the dynamic roles from the second claim of the access token;evaluating a dynamic policy that corresponds to the dynamic roles,wherein the evaluating the dynamic policy comprises evaluating acondition associated with the dynamic policy; and based on theevaluating the dynamic policy, adding the dynamic scopes to the staticscopes from the first claim of the access token to generate allowedscopes for the access authorization request.
 16. The cloud based systemof claim 15, wherein the resource is protected from access based atleast on a tenancy of an access requesting user or an access requestingapplication, and the access token request further comprises acorresponding tenant of the user, and an indication of whether the useris an administrator for the application.
 17. The cloud based system ofclaim 16, wherein the access token comprises custom token claimsindicating whether the user is the administrator for the application.18. The cloud based system of claim 15, wherein when an OnBehalfOfUserproperty is true, the second intersection include the dynamic roles ofthe application and the dynamic roles of the user when present.
 19. Thecloud based system of claim 15, wherein providing the access tokencomprises recording a tuple comprising the dynamic roles and thecorresponding dynamic scopes.
 20. The cloud based system of claim 15,wherein the dynamic scopes comprise OAuth scopes and the clientcomprises an OAuth client and comprises the user or the application.